Nov, 2, 1885-1 THE 



,,'iCAL AGRICULTUIJIST, 



373 



iuilastry bnt fishing. Men, women and children, 

 they aU dive like sea-fowl, and the women are the 

 most expert. Two women especially of Faili, and 

 one of .4naa or Chain Island, are well-known in 

 this trade — more dreadful far than samphire- 

 gathering — for plunging into twenty-live fathoms 

 of water, in the teeth of the sharks, and remain- 

 ing as long as three whole minutes under water. 

 A famous diver of Anaa escaped not long ago 

 fronr a shark with the loss of a breast and an 

 arm. and many of them go down never to come 

 up again. If they make too many pUuiges in their 

 day's work at the beginning of the season, which 

 comp rises the summer months, from November to 

 February, they bring on hemorrhage or congestion ; 

 and after some years passed in the occupation, 

 paralysis is certain. Few of these divers work for 

 themselves, but can earn i.< a day from the pearl- 

 traders. With a wooden tube some 10 in. long, 

 10 in. square, and glazed at one end, they prospect 

 from their boats the bottom of these trauslucid 

 seas ; the glass end. which is put into the water, 

 serving the puiiiose of suppressing the eye-puzzUng 

 surface-ripple. 



Tlie diver of the Persian Gulf or of Ceylon at- 

 taches a weight of some 20 lb. to his feet to aid 

 iu his descent, and carries 7 lb. or 8 lb. more of 

 ballast in a belt. He protects both eyes and ears 

 with oiled cotton, bandages his mouth, and goes 

 down forty feet with a rope. He remains down 

 from fifty-three to eighty seconds, and helps him- 

 self up again by the rope. But the Pacific diver 

 practices the conjuror's boast of " no preparation." 

 Just before the plunge he or she draws a full breath 

 rapidly three or four times running, and finally, 

 with the lungs full of air, drops feet first to the 

 bottom, not forty feet but twenty-five or thirty 

 fathoms (1.50 ft. to 180 ft.), and comes to the surface 

 again with extraordinary swiftness, unaided iu any 

 way. Each dive generally lasts from sixty to ninety 

 seconds ; and only very occasionally the astonish- 

 ing maximum of three minutes. The divers hardly 

 ever bring up more than one oyster at a time : 

 but this is chosen as likely to contain pearls by 

 some fancied rule of thumb of their own. grounded 

 on age, form and colour ; and they hold the shells 

 tightly together as they mount, lest the envious 

 oyster should shed the iiearl, which the divers them- 

 selves are very quick to conceal by swallowing if 

 the employer's eye is not fixed on them. Diving- 

 bells have been introduced by some houses in the 

 trade ; but the natives will no longer work in 

 them, saying they bring on early paralysis of the 

 legs. 



Like his edible relative, the pearl-oyster also has 

 his enemies and parasites. A flat-fish, called 

 tuhcrcta by the natives of this Polynesian archi- 

 pelago, makes great ravages among the young fry ; 

 it resembles the eagle-ray, which is so destructive 

 iu European oyster-beds. There is another, a long 

 fish with powerful jaws for crunching the full- 

 grown oyster, which is called the oiri or kotolie: 

 and does not seem to have been identified by 

 naturalists. There arc also two univalve shell- 

 fiah — a murex, which spends its time boring holes 

 light through the oyster, and a pholade, which 

 BcoopB a nest for itseli in the upper shell, just 

 80 his fellows do in the rocks of our own coasts. 

 But the worst pest of all is probably a marine 

 worm, locally called tlio necdle-worni, which pierces a 

 network of galleries, like the book-worm or the 

 teredo, between the outer and inner surfaces of 

 the shell, and so ruins the mother-of-pearl; which 

 when .«o damaged i.s known in the trade as womi- 

 eaten. There is a small parasitical sjwnge, too, 

 ffbiclj btaios or "spots" the mother-of-pearl. 



Polypi, Ascidians, and Serpnla; all mingle in the 

 fray ; and while the older crabs remove the young 

 oysters from their beds with their nippers, to be 

 eaten at leisure, the crab fry get inside and billet 

 themselves ;iL bed and board on the grown oyster 

 until they have oaten their host out of house and 

 hui.:^. It is very possible that some of these 

 enemies are the irritant causes of the pearls ; 

 in the centre of which there is almost always 

 some foreign substance, such as a grain of sand 

 or a fish's egg. A great number of small pcarla 

 arc sometimes found in one bivalve ; one with 

 115, from Elizabeth or Toau Island, hi the Toauiotu 

 group, was shown in Paris in 1878. Some pearls 

 reach a great size ; and one from Panama, which 

 was presented to Philip II. of Spain in 1579, is 

 recorded to have been as big as a pigeon's egg. 



Imitation pearls — and admirable imitations the 

 best of them are — are not uncommon just now. 

 They were first invented in IGoli by one Jaquin, 

 a French enamellcr on glass. The little glass 

 globules of which they consist are first lined with 

 a mixture of isinglass and " essence of the East," 

 and then stuffed with melted wax. This essence 

 j d'Orient is made of the pearly matter which is 

 found at the base of the scales of the whiting, 

 preserved in ammonia. — St. James's Gazette. 



A CEYLON "ESTATE." 



" ESTy^TK" OR "G.inDEX"— NO SUCH THING NOWADAYS AS 



A "COFFEE ESTATF."— R. I. P. "LAY" OP ESTATES — THEIR 



SITUATION AND ELEVATION — HOW WORKED — COFFEE 

 LAND— TEA LAND— WEEDI.N'G— UOADS AND DRAINS — 

 SDPERINTENDENT's work— lining — BUILDINGS: (1) 

 COOLY LINES ; (2) TEA FACTOEV ; (3) BUNGALOWS; (4) 

 CATTLE-SHEDS — WHO ARE OUR COOLIES ? — A DAT's 

 ROUTINE— GRAND3I0THERLY G0VERN3IENT ENCOURAG- 

 ING CRIME — CONDUCTORS — TEA-MAKERS. 



Now, in the ' eighties,' the tendency seems to be 

 to prefer the word " garden " to " estate," in 

 accordance with the custom that obtains in India. 

 The old planters, however, will continue to use 

 the word to which they have been so long ac- 

 customed, and which the eternal fitness of things 

 appears to waiTant ; for a property of many 

 hundreds of acres, valued when in full beating 

 at many thousands of pounds, is surely an 

 " estate," and a very desirable one to boot, while 

 in Ceylon a " garden " has hitherto meant only 

 a native's jjatch. The w-ord " plantation " long 



; ago feU into disuse, being retained only to designate 

 the coffee produced on an estate. 



A "coffee estate" xmre and simi^lc, such as 

 was universal only a very short time ago, scarcely 

 exists in Ceylon in the present day, and to 

 describe one would be a work of supererogation. 

 They are either defunct and abandoned, or so 



i much mixed up with " new products " as no 



longer to be recognizable in their old glorious and 



lamented simplicity. Let, therefore, their memory 



rest in peace, and turn we to the things of today. 



The Ceylon estates, then, for the most part, 



[ occupy all the high laud from 2,000 to, say, now- 



■ a days, 6,000 feet elevation, covering the steep 

 sides and hollows of the mountainous region 

 occupying the centre of the island — and tea 

 is also being planted in districts only a very 

 few feet above oea-level, where ooft'ee would 

 not grow. As, therefore, tea flourishes, and will 

 be cultivated, at altitudes both considerably higher 

 and considerably lower than was possible with coffee, 

 the ultimate area under tea will be much largci' 

 than was ever under coffee cultivation ; especially 

 as, in addition to this fact, much of the land 

 ou the old estates considered unsuitable for coffee 



i is being planted up with tea. Before the advent 



