JANUARY i, iS86.] -fHE TUOPiCAL AG RrcULTURIST. 



495 



^ 



To the EiUlor of the " Ceijlon Observer." 



CUKE FOR DYSENTKBY; TEA AND FIBBES 



IN SOUTHEEN INDIA. 



2nd Dec. 1885. 



llE.ui Sir, — Your note on the value of the bael 

 fruit as a remedy for dysentery reminds mo to 

 send you the enclosed extract from a letter lately 

 received from a yentleman, deservedly an authority 

 on idanting matters, in South India, that may 

 otherwise be read with interest : — 



"Ootacamund, 17th Nov. 1885. 



" T heard of a man at Coonoor who yave 1190,000 

 for 50 acres of tea and -50 acres of scrub. The 

 bushes give 400 lb. an acre, and they say they 

 make 7 per cent on the purchase, but matters 

 here just now are not looking up, as there have 

 been many failures, especially of a large firm that 

 did business in eoffce and tea plantations. There 

 is no doubt that any plantation of tea that gives 

 5U0 lb. an acre must pay well, specially with the 

 price of silver falling, if you would avoid too 

 much blossom at that low elevation plant nothing 

 but the best sort of Assam, no suspicion of China 

 about them. Did you ever try the Maseekoy nut for 

 dysentery ? It acts like a charm. It can be bought 

 in the bazaar. One nut ground down with water 

 is generally enough. The rhea here under Mr. 

 Minchin is doing well, and likely to be a success. 

 I know him very well, and lie told me that he 

 had 250 acres i^lanted, and was going to adopt 

 a process for cleaning that was certain to succeed. 

 But the plant requires high cultivation to yield 

 wuU : plenty of irrigation and manure." - 



Unfortunately the name of the nut is rather in- 

 distinctly written. It looks to me like "Maseekoy" 

 nut. Perhaps you can identify it — with further 

 particulars— and say if procurable locally '? RDO.OOO 

 ■ sounds a good selling figure for 50 acres of tea 

 giving only a third the croii average of JIariawatte, 

 and, say, Jiatf of our less sanguine hopes elsewhere 

 here ; and 7 per cent rather a more modest interest 

 than men in Ceylon, I expect, would care to calc- 

 ulate on as their maximnin from an agricultural 

 investment, with its hard work, anxiety, and many 

 uncertainties. A pity a few more of these less 

 avaricious investors from India don't come over 

 here with their jwckets full : little doubt but they 

 would find themselves met in a friendly and fair 

 spirit ? 



It would bo interesting to have fuller particulars 

 of this new fibre-cleaning process, and I hope to 

 get them later on. I expect it has reference to 

 the use of a cheap chemical, lately discovered, that 

 I read somewhere had been found to answer, 

 The only thing nece»sary was to boil rhea ribbons 

 for a short time in a solution, with no further 

 " plant " than a few inexpensive boilers-and I 

 euppose a baling press— required to produce a sample, 

 perfect under every test I I-'roni what I could make 

 out from a friend who has recently visited Mr. 

 Minchin's estate, with the idea of cultivating fibre 

 here, we arc out of the running as regards rich- 

 ness of soil, but our climate and facilities for 

 irrigation and manuring sulficiently greater to more 

 than make up for this ! Rupees one hundred per 

 acre seems tu be the annual profit anticipated in 

 India. R. 



rMr. Minchin has written twice to us explaining 

 llis fibre work : his Ictlcrs will bo found in the 

 Tropical Aiiriciiltiirist : the BiOO per acre have not 

 yet been made.— Er.j 



TEA PLANTING IN UVA. 



BaduUa, 5th Deo. 1885. 



Deau Sin, — A great deal of valuabb, if not pract- 

 ical, information regarding the progress of cultiv- 

 ation of tea in the Uva districts ought now to bo 

 reaching you, but it is not nearly so full as it 

 might be, and, considering the great importance 

 of the subject, any special effort made by you to 

 furnish us more frequently, and with fuller inform- 

 ation, would, I feel sure, be greatly appreciated by 

 all who have (and who has not?) the success of 

 the enterprise at heart. The figures of the area 

 under tea in Uva in your new Directory will prove 

 , ry interesting, and doubtless the information will 

 be as complete as possible up to the date of public- 

 ation, but the aspect of things is changing with 

 us every day, and so much is being done in a 

 quiet determined fashion, which is only known to 

 those immediately connected with the carrying out 

 of the work, that many of your readers would be 

 glad to see a larger space in the Ohserrcr under 

 the heading of " Planting Notes " devoted to " Tea 

 in Uva." In this connection Mr. Johnson's letter 

 in your issue of the 2nd inst. is of considerable 

 interest, but not of much value. It it interosfiug 

 to know that a marketable tea can be grown on an 

 estate situated as Dotlands is, in the midst of a 

 large tract of patana, and a rainfall which docs 

 not compare very favorably with the returns pub- 

 lished from other properties in the district where 

 tea is being planted on a very extensive scale, and 

 if it can only bo shown that tea will grow and 

 pay on Dotlands, it would prove a source of great 

 comfort to some of us. If the only thing which 

 stands in the way of Mr. Johnson's extending his 

 area is the price which his tea is likely to fetch in 

 the local market, his doubts on this point would 

 be most cflectually solved by bis sending a sample 

 for report and valuation, accompanied by the small 

 sum of Ro, to one of tlic many expierienccd tasters 

 now resident in Colombo. But I fear that some- 

 thing more than this is required, tor, until his tea 

 is a good deal older, he will not be able to say 

 whether Dotlands is capable of producing the article 

 at a figure which will show a balance on the right side. 



It is true we have to pay somewhat heavily for 

 the transport of our i>roduce and supplies, but the 

 difference on this item will not be found so much 

 in favour of districts served by the railway, as Mr. 

 Johnson's remarks would lead one to suppose. Were 

 the profits on the cultivation of tea in Uva to be 

 calculated on so fine a scale as the difference in cost 

 'twixt road and rail transport, the prosi^ect would 

 not be a bright one. The reasons that might 

 be urged in favor of railway extension to Badulla 

 are legion, and I must say that you have consist- 

 ently and persistently brought forward the whole 

 array on every possible occasion when their recapitul- 

 ation could be of any service to us, but perish the 

 thought that the absence of a railway should Btand 

 laetween us and the successful and p)o(itable cult- 

 ivation of tea. The question of transport and 

 almost every other item which is likely to crop up 

 in connection with tea has already received most 

 careful consideration at the hands of some of those 

 who are foremost in the enterprize, and it should 

 be encouraging to those who hold suitable land in 

 this district to know that one of its earliests pioneer 

 (Mr. John Brown) is now one of the strongest ad- 

 vocates for the extension of tea on the large pro- 

 perties in which he is still interested, and with 

 whose management lie has for so many years been 

 closely connected. The rate of transport has not 

 been prohibitive in the case of coffee, neither will 

 it be 60 with tea, Indeed the benefits of quick 

 traospovt as regards collee are of vastly more im- 



