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THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [SEPTEMBfiR i, 1885. 



new animal, that trees breath just as men, that the age of 

 dogs IS 20 years, cat 15, hare S, elephant IC'O, pig 25, horse 

 30, ass 30, camel 50, goat 12, cow 15, crow 100, peacock 

 20, fowls 10, tortoise 100 all these and the like are both 

 amusing and instructive to learn. The farmer, the grocer, 

 the medical practitioner, the headman, the housewife, the 

 smith a!id every class of men will find in this book many 

 useful facts and hints. Mr. B. recommends English ploughs 

 for our use saying that it costs only 12 annas to plough 

 an acre with an Knglish plough while with a native plough, 

 it costs 50 annas. He also tells us that the Americans 

 cultivate their paddy in a different way from ours which is 

 so good and suggests that it is thi' very paddy which should 

 be introduced here as a change for the soil. AYe also learn 

 that we Tamils are 15 millions strong. 



Speaking of the dignity of agriculture his words are so 

 true and impressive that we will quote them in English as 

 nearly as possible. " But in our country the soil is hungry, 

 cattle hungry, tenant hungry, farmer hungry, subject hungry 

 and the King also hungry. If the hunger of the soil be 

 appeased " every other hunger will be appeased. We acknow- 

 ledge the book with thanks. — "Ceylou Patriot," July 17th. 



Good Coffee Crop.s. — Not alone in Uva are 

 there good coffee crops this season : Mr. Cantlay 

 can show 200 acres on the Mount Vernon property 

 with 5 cwt. per acre, according to present appear- 

 ances ; Bearwell has 4 cwt. over 200 acres ; Belgravia 

 is to <Io well as usual ; while in the Wallaha valley 

 there are several good crops, if only leaf-disease would 

 not disturb calculations at this critical time. North 

 of Kandy, the return of coffee from the older dis- 

 tricts is almost, if not quite, nil, owing to the 

 ravages of bug. 



The Fame of the Ceylox Tea EsxEErRizE 

 has indeed reached a height, when at the meeting of 

 shareholders in the Land Mortgage Bank of India, 

 one gentleman, Mr. Buchanan, announced as a fact — 

 and he was not contradicted — that "80,000 acres of 

 tea in cultivation in Ceylon a year or two ago, 

 had increased to 540,000 "!— What next? Strange, 

 however, that a roomful of people, all interested in 

 " tea," did not notice this gross exaggeration on the 

 face of it. When Ceylon gets to half this area, or 

 say 200,000 acres, some years hence, it will be time 

 for India tea planters to put their house in order. 



White-ants and Elf.vatiom in Ceylon. — A planter 

 writes : — " Re your worthy art'ole on white-ants, what 

 would be the elevation of Fernlands, PundaUmya ? 

 There white ants attempt to pull down store and bunga- 

 low. I do not think it is so much elevatii n, as if they 

 have a free passage from low-lying paddy-fields to 

 the estates, but a strip of jungle will stop them-" 

 Fernlands store in Pundaluoja must, we suppose, be 

 situated at about an elevation of 3,000 feet above sea- 

 level. Tiiere is something in what our correspondent 

 gays. — We have just learned, however, thut the pro- 

 prietor of Fernlands never heard of his store being 

 attacked by white-ants ! 



CoFrEE IN CooRO, Mercara,— Our supply of Jtysore 

 cooly labor is but slowly coming in as yet, there 

 has evidtutly been considerable delay in the west province 

 from want of rain for planting grain and cereals ; men 

 who have now come in, say that only in the end of May, 

 when the weather was so cyclouish in Coorg, did thi'y get 

 sufficient rain to plotigh ; since which time rain has been 

 general, and grtiin is much chea]>er. I <lo not know of 

 any new estates being opened this year ; planters are wait- 

 ing for the clouds to lift a little mure, before utilizing 

 their jungles. AVe have had some c.ipital planting or 

 supplying weather since the 2nd instant, when the mon- 

 soon may be said to have commenced. There has been 

 rain every day since, and persistent high winds, which 

 have done some small damage, Vmt it is womlerful grow- 

 ing weather. There has been some disaiipoinlnient felt 

 from the effects of Kinger, which in new eleiirings has 

 largely attacked last year's plants, and killed off about 30 

 per cent, This insect is never seen st work ; it sleeps by 



day in holes in the ground under fallen leaves if possible, 

 then when darkness comes it emerges forth, eats the tender 

 bark of the young stem, perhaps halt an inch in width, 

 but completely round the stem, and does nothing more; 

 that plant dies, but the grub or Kinger lives on, and 

 attacks more plants. It was in March last I first saw the 

 effects of the pest, and was jnizzled to know the evil at 

 first, ascribing it to grasshoppers ; it was accident which 

 led to my finding them to be night prowlers, for at fii'st 

 I procured some thin breasted, long legged, hungry coun- 

 try fowls, and turned them at libt-rty in a new clearing, 

 but they only seemed to get lost, witliout checking this 

 mysterious ringer, which was now getting a nuisance and 

 a danger : so eventually I had to get lanterns, and with 

 persuasion mustered a few coolies, to search after dark, 

 and pop them into bottles. Filling the bottles with boil- 

 ing water afterwards was quite a pleasure. I have not 

 noticed any fresh attacks, since the monsoon came on. — 

 Madras HUiiidard. 



Tka in Japan.— As the season progi esses, says 

 the Japan Mail, of July 11th, people begin to discover 

 that happily the gloomy prospects outlined in Noti- 

 fication No. 20, of the Department of Agriculture and 

 Commerce, are not likely to be fully realized. We 

 were tcdd by the compilers of that remarkable docu- 

 ment that the climatic irregularities of the spring 

 seemed to portend serious agricultural misfortune, 

 and that the crops of tea ant! wheat bad already 

 showed deficiencies of fifty and forty per cent, res- 

 pectively, as compared with normal yields. It was 

 certainly true, at the time of the notiUcation'a issue, 

 that owing to late frosts and want of manure, tea 

 shrubs had not been productive at the first pulling. 

 But the conditions of tea cultivation render it rash to 

 foretell definite results at an early stage, inasmuch as 

 the second crop of leaves may, and frequently does, 

 prove sufficiently prolific to compensate previous de- 

 ficiencies. Such, indeed, is said to be the case this 

 year. The market returns show settlements of ninety 

 thousand piculs up to the end of June, against eighty- 

 seven thousand at the same period of IS84. 



CocoNDTS AND Cbabs ON THE Keelixg ISLANDS. — Land- 

 Ward the soil is tilled by the great coconut crab (Birus 

 latro). It is chiefly nocturnal in its habits, making tun- 

 nels in the ground larger than rabbit burrows, lined for 

 warmth (?) with coconut fibre. It feeds almost exclus- 

 ively on fallen coconuts, using its great claw to denude 

 the fruit of the husk surrounding it, and to get at the 

 eye of the nut, which it has learned is the only easy 

 gateway to the interior. Of the three eye spots seen at 

 the end of a coconut, only one permits an easy entrance. 

 The Birgus does not waste its energies in denuding the 

 whole uut, and it never denudes the wrong end. Having 

 pierced the proper eye with one of its spindle ambulatory 

 legs, it rotates the nut round till the orifice is large enough 

 to permit the insertion of its great claw to break up the 

 shell, and triturate its contents, whose particles it then 

 carries to its mouth by means of its other and smuller 

 cheliferous foot. From this nutritious diet it accumulates 

 beneath its tail a store of fat, which dissolves by heat into 

 a rich yellow oil, of which a large specimen will often 

 yield as much as two pints. Thickened in the sun, it forms 

 an excellent substitute for butter in all its uses. Mr, 

 Forbes also discovered it to be a- valuable preserving lu- 

 bricant for guns and steel instruments ; and only when 

 a small bottle of it, which he bad had for two years, 

 was finished, did he fully realise what a precious anti-cor- 

 rosive in these humid regions he had lost. The coconut 

 tree as a rule is a branchless palm, but on AVest Island, 

 one of the Keeling group, Jlr. Forbes noted its rare occur- 

 rence as a branching tree, which,' instead of fruiting 

 spikes, invariably produced persistent branches crowned with 

 a bunch of leaves — adding to the beauty of the already 

 graceful palm. Tender favourable circumstances, it ap- 

 pears, the coconut can produce its first fruit within four 

 years from the fall of the seed nut from its parent tree, 

 while it can go on for an unknown jieri-id throwing ouj 

 every month a new fruit spike, bearing from seven to four, 

 tucn nuts, which require from eight to thirteen montii,, 

 tg ripen,,— ,fteW 



