iSIoV. 2, 1885.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



337 



TEA AT A HIGH ELEVATION IN CEYLON. 



Ground covered with tea in full leafage, particularly 

 when the landscape features are undulating, is a pretty 

 sight ; but for continued and varied beauty old coffee 

 certainly bore away the palm. " Handling " and 

 even pruning in the case of coffee left the soil still 

 well covered, and to luxuriant and handsome foliage 

 were, in due season, added the snow-white and jas- 

 mine-scented blossom, and the green, yeUow and 

 ruby-red shades of the fruit contrasted with the 

 green of the leaves. But, excepting the few bushes 

 preserved as seed-bearers, tea is not allowed to 

 blossom or fruit, and when the time for a thorough 

 pruning comes there is such a cutting down and 

 away of wood, that, at any distance, the soil looks 

 as if it had been completely bared. In from two 

 to three months, however, the close carpeting of 

 golden green is restored, and the process of picking 

 goes on until the cutting-down time has come 

 round again. Simultaneously with the pruning of 

 bushes of good age, the stems have to be rubbed 

 clear of lichens and mud, by means of the naked 

 hand or the hand aided by a bit of sacking. The 

 stems of the coffee trees would be rubbed also 

 were it worth while to bestow further labour 

 or expenditure on a cultivation which was once 

 reckoned our mainstay. A visitor fresh from 

 the eastern side of the range, where coffee is 

 still worth cherishing, said to us a couple of days ago : 

 " Surely you will preserve that fine-looking coffee." 

 The atiswer was to point to the miserable sprinkling 

 of berries at distant intervals amongst the really 

 luxuriant foliage. Amidst the crop of leaves the 

 fungus had to be searched for, but so had the fruit, 

 and as the leaves cannot be converted into a 

 merchantable and profitable product, the Une-toohiiiri 

 coffee must go, however severe the pang may be of 

 parting with what, if Hcmileiu vr'.stiitri.r had not so 

 fatally intervened, would be now in its prime of crop- 

 yielding. The final decision to uproot the old 

 product in favour of the new must be much more 

 trying in those young districts than in the old, 

 where coffee did not fail until for more than a 

 generation it gave paying, in some cases largely 

 profitable, returns. But the decision must be arrived 

 at and carried out, to prevent the tea bushes 

 planted, amidst coffee growing up feeble and spindly. 

 The branches and leaves of the coffee bushes will be 

 buried, while the stems go to feed the tea furnaces, 

 — the old king being cremated, in fact, to the tune 

 of requiescnt in pui:c ! Peace be to its ashes, with 

 their apjjreciable proportion of lime extracted from 

 a soil, the ferruginous nature of which renders it 

 far more favourable for tea than for coffee, although 

 the latter (ircw well enough and would have yielded 

 fruit as well as leaves, had the enfeebling fungus 

 not been developed in 1869, to be at first made light 

 of, but finally recognized as one of the most disastrous 

 blights which ha's ever dei:)ressed, if not quenched, a 

 great< advancing and prosperous enterprise. Java 

 and the whole Eastern world are rapidly following 

 in the wake of Ceylon experience, in this matter, 

 and it really looks as if those of us who can afford 

 to indulge in the luxury of a cu.j) of coffee must 

 erelong pay the cost of having it imported from the 

 Western Continent. Let us fervently hope that no 

 such dread visitation awaits the now most promising 

 tea enterprise. 



Some readers of the Trnjiical Auriciiltnriat may 

 recollect notices of plants, the result of seed obtained 

 from Assam as " indigenous." The jjlants were 

 put out along the sides of estate paths, 

 at elevations rising from .'J.aOO to .5,.0OO, 

 in July 1880, and until now their progress has 

 been so slow and unsatisfactory as to lead to 



43 



the belief that indigenous Assam tea was unsuited 

 to the climate of this altitude. But whether it 

 has arisen from the recurrence of several genial 

 seasons, or that the plants have, at length, been 

 able to adapt themselvea to the conditions of their 

 new situation, certain it is that tliey have taken 

 a spring and promise to make up for lost time. 

 They are, in common with the superior hybrids 

 amongst which they are scattered, putting forth 

 luxuriant foliage, many of the leaves being large; 

 corrugated and serrated after the marked character- 

 istics of indigenous Assam tea. The progress 

 and comparative yield of these plants will be 

 watched and reported on. Meantime I may men- 

 tion that the effect of altitude even on hybrid tea 

 bushes is, that some allowed to grow up as future 

 seed-bearers show not the slightest sign of any 

 tendency to blossom, although they are now eight 

 to, in a few cases, ten years old. With similar 

 trees in the hot low country, only a few hundreds 

 of feet above sea-level, the difficulty is to contend 

 with the per.sisteut tendency to run all their 

 strength into ; flowers and fruits. 



Could the conjunction be made to pay, our 

 experience is decisivQ in farour of growing cinchonas 

 (especially C. officinalis) amongst tea, which evid- 

 ently benefits the fever plants by opening up and 

 draining the soil. But bark prices recently have 

 been such as to make cinchonas stink in the 

 nostrils of planters, almost as much as coffee ; 

 indeed more so, because hopes of retrieval were so 

 largely based on this new and at one time most 

 hopeful product. A large proportion of planters 

 will, of course, harvest and market the bark from all 

 their cinchona trees, ceasing to supply the soil 

 with any more. The result may be profitable prices to 

 those who can hold on. Many who would hold on can- 

 not, because at a certain stage the choice must be made 

 between tea and other cultivation — not only coffee 

 but cinchonas. We suppose it is this desire to do 

 full justice to the tea plants, which has led to the 

 ringing of so many eueal;>iiti in the neighbourhood 

 of the Nanuoya station. We take it for granted that 

 the trees which have suddenly changed their hue 

 from bluish green to yellowish white hat-r been ringed, 

 preparatory to their removal. So opinion changes. 

 The blue-gums were and are still believed to be 

 beneficial as wind-breaks and soil-drainers in cin- 

 chona fields ; but tea, unless it makes an exception 

 in the case of the sau tree, 



" Bears, like the Turk, no brother near the throne." 



-$- 



CEYLON UPCOUNTBY PLANTING REPORT. 



28th Sept. 1885. 

 Coffee — what there is on our side — is not looking 

 very promising. There was such an attack of leaf- 

 disease some time ago, that the trees are now left 

 pretty bare, whereas the ground is thickly littered 

 with fallen leaves. When the regular heavy 

 rains of the north-east set in, the drains will amuse 

 us. There is a little coffee ripening up ; but the 

 blackening at the i)oints is as excessive as ever in 

 was. Half-a-bushel picking of this sort of stuff, to 

 a quarter of a cooty-sack of cherry, has been 

 gathered at the first round, and even a worse re- 

 sult in some places. The husk is not so empty 

 as one would have expected from the long dry weather 

 and may nett something above the cost of gather- 

 ing, now that the rupee has fallen among the 

 despised things of the earth. Black-bug seems to 

 be checked somewhat : still it's about, and evidently 

 ready to wipe out what little of the old product 

 remains at the slightest encouragement. 



I saw an analysis of some renewed succirubra bark 

 grown on Fairieland estate — just above Kandy — which 



