September i, ibSf,] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



215 



K6O per acre, what planter can afford it now even once 

 in two years ? A third remedy may possibly be found in 

 bone dust and potash, with or without poonac applied 

 vnder shade. This could be applied for half the cost of 

 cattle manure, but is apt, without a shade, to kill the 

 trees with overcropping, putting my experience is a heavy 

 crop 11 cwt. per acre, on the trees of a very inferior 

 sample. Shade I think it very possible may succour the 

 trees by shielding them from the sun, when it is hottest, 

 and when exhausted by a heaN-y crop they are least able 

 to bear it, and by adding vegetable mould, that is moist- 

 ure and depth of soil, for the roots to work in. But it 

 remains to be proved if any but bamboo estates will crop 

 under shade, and will not suffer in the rains from leaf 

 rot. In any case, I doubt if shade has any effect on 

 colour, beyond shielding from strain, trees forced either 

 by cUmate or phosphates into heavy cropping. Of course 

 the less strain on your tree the more vigorous it is, and 

 the more vigorous your tree the better yoiu' sample. But 

 shade alone will not do it. The best Ooorg estates are 

 all very heavily manured with bones and poonac, and 

 would not crop without it. Your correspondent " Scot " 

 is inclined to attribute the falling-off of the sample to 

 planting cinchona among the coffee, and rightly says coffee 

 under large and thickly-planted cinchonas is found to be 

 in a very bad way. But can he tell me if any trees 

 under which "if large and thickly planted," coffee would 

 not be in a bad way? It he spends as much money 

 lopping his cinchonas as Ooorg planters do lopping their 

 shade, he will find he can grow cinchonas ten feet by 

 ten in his coffee, and it wiU be all the better for them, 

 and certainly none the worse for six or seven years. In 

 time he may have to thin them out, but it is only a 

 question of light, and not of the cinchona eating up the 

 coffee, or poisoning it. At least that is the experience of 

 S. 'Wynaad, 23rd July. -In Indian Planteb. 



A question of great interest to planters has recently 

 arisen as to the causes of the deterioration of the coffee 

 bean from the standard of former years. Complaints on 

 this subject appear to be general both in Coorg and iu 

 ■Wynaad, but it is iu the latter district that cultivators 

 have suffered most. The V.'ynaad Planters' As.sociation 

 has taken the matter up, and has circulated amongst 

 similar bodies in Southern India a number of quest- 

 ions, in the replies to which, it is hoped, some remedy 

 will be suggested, A correspondent who is familiar with 

 the Mysore coffee plantation, and whose letter was pub- 

 lished on the 1st instant, attributes the undoubtedly 

 superior colour of the Mysore bean to the dense shade 

 under which it is grown, and to the dryness of the 

 climate ; he says that 'Wynaad planters are only now 

 beginning to grow shade, ami that they must wait 

 another ten years until it has sprung up sufficiently 

 for any improvement iu prices. Happily for the Wynaad 

 men, few of whom, we imagine, could stand another 

 decade of depression, our correspondent has fallen into 

 the common error of confounding the post hoc with the 

 propter hoc. He forgets that the Ceylon coffee grown 

 unaer diametrically opposite conditions to those prevail- 

 ing in Jlyeore, without a stick of shade, and in a damper 

 climate than AVynaad, fetches a high price in the London 

 market. Besides this, it was pointed out some months 

 back in the Madras Mail that "Wynaad planters are not 

 now only beginning to plant shade, they hare been 

 doing so extensively for several years, and none of them 

 would now omit to put out shade-trees with their coffee 

 plants. Moreover, the marked badness of colour has 

 only been noticed within the last year or two. The 

 e.xplanation mu.'it then be sought elsewhere. 



Does the fault He with the method of cultivation on 

 the estates, or with the treatment the coffee receives 

 jn the curing yards on the Coast? The coast firms are 

 naturally ansioijs to .shift the blame on to the planters, 

 and say that the coffee is picked either before it is ripe, 

 or after it is too ripe, that it is sent down too wet, 

 and that sufficient care is not taken of it on the estates. 

 On the other hand, it has been remarked that no 

 dit{i>reuce of tr«atmeut on (be varioue iiUutatiuui appetn'i; 



to have made any difference iu universally bad jjrices 

 realized. 'Whether the coffee was grown in the open 

 or under shade, whether it was maniu-ed with cattle or 

 artificial manure, or not manured at all, whether weigh- 

 ing 40 lb. or 30 lb. a bushel when despatched to th« 

 Coast, the result was equally disheartening. Of course 

 there may be something iu a district having got a bad 

 name, in a past season for want of colour, and buyers 

 being thus made distrustful; but the awkward fact re- 

 mains, that the overland post samples were iu many 

 cases valued iu London at £10 or £15 a ton more than 

 the bulk — from which these samples were, presumably, 

 taken — realized when it reached home, the market not 

 ha%-ing fallen in the interval. The samples of "Wynaad 

 coffee in particular were pronounced, both iu India and 

 in London, to be unusually good, while the bulk was 

 phenomenally ,bad. This points to some mismanagement 

 in the curing yards in preparing for shipment if the 

 samples were f.-urly taken. Here we would draw atten- 

 tion to what our correspondents say in their letters 

 which appear in another page. It might bo worth con- 

 sidering whether the reduction in the curing charges, 

 which was almost forced upon the coast firms three 

 years ago, has not led to careless working. It is generally 

 supposed that in a good season the average profit on cur- 

 ing a tou of coffee is R17; at present rates, this would 

 seem quite sufficient. If, however, the drying and packing 

 are badly done, it would perhaps pay planters to return 

 to the old tariff. If the plan now usually adopted, of 

 shipping coffee in double sacks, does not ensure its ar- 

 riving in good condition, the R5 a tou that was taken 

 off would be well expended on barrels or airtight cases. 

 In the matter of shipping, we would again question 

 the accuracy of the correspondent whose letter we have 

 already noticed, and ask why he considers it better to 

 send coft'ee by chartered steamers than by the British 

 India line. As a matter of policy it may be well to sup- 

 port the former and keep alive a healthy opposition, 

 but it would be difficult to persuade us that coffee 

 arrives in a worse condition after a voyage of five weeks, 

 than after it has been knocking about the coast for a 

 month between Cochin, Calicut and Tellicherry, iu one 

 of the chartered steamers, which then takes about eight 

 weeks more on the way home. 



So far as we can judge from the evidence already 

 brought forward on the subject, we are inclined to think 

 that, while a certain amount of mismanagement may be 

 charged against the coast firms, planters are also to 

 some extent to blame. It is a bad time to recommend 

 the letter to provide increased store room, and to spend 

 more money on drying the coffee on their estates. But 

 the low prices they have obtained, are to be attributed 

 partly to their want of attention to these two matters, 

 and they should be considered with the first gleam of 

 returning prosperity, which, we hope, will not be so 

 long in coming as our correspondent suggests. In a 

 rainy crop time the parchment is often allowed to get 

 wet after it has been taken out of the vats, and it is 

 even heajied up in an unventilated store before it is 

 properly dried. Should the experimental plantations, 

 suggested by Mr. Clarke, in the essay we recently 

 reviewed, be established, no doubt this deterioration will 

 he one of the first questions investigated. In the mean- 

 time it is no good telling planters, as our correspondent 

 does, " to wait till the clouds roll by ;" the clouds have 

 been rolling by the planter for the last five years, and 

 the horizon .shows little sign of clearing. It was not 

 by howling that hackneyed ditty that the Ceylon plant- 

 era lifted themselves out of the ruin caused by the 

 failure of their coffee. \\'\ih all their brag and affected 

 contempt for other disfncts, there is miich in their con- 

 duct that Indian planters would do well tn imitate. 

 As long as they could get money to work their coffee, 

 they maintained that no one but themselves understood 

 the art; when four-fifths of the coffee acreage in the 

 island was utterly ruined, they boldly went on for cinchona, 

 and announced to the world that Ceylon was the only 

 country where it could be grown to a profit. Finding 

 this disproved by the bard logic of fact, they rooted out 

 their cinchona and replaced it with tea; and now they 

 gaily talk of driving the Indian and Ohinese tea out of 

 the niftrket. In e ytar cr two mero tbey may be digging 



