Ceylon and S. India. i 7 



with within the tropics. My experience of coffee- 

 planting having been gained in Ceylon and 

 Southern 'India, the present work will be found 

 naturally to refer more particularly to the cultiva- 

 tion of the plant in those countries. 



By whom or at what date the coffee plant was 

 first introduced into Ceylon and S. India, is not 

 very clear ; but there is little doubt this must 

 have occurred at least a couple of centuries ago. 

 It may probably have found its way eastward from 

 Southern Arabia, in coasting craft, at a very early 

 period ; indeed, the natives of Mysore have a tra- 

 dition that it was brought into the Munzerabad 

 or Chick Moogloor districts by an Arab, between 

 400 and 500 years ago. Trees, then evidently of 

 great age, were first observed in the Coorg territory 

 half a century ago, and at Manantoddy in the 

 Wynaad, a tree, then supposed to be fully thirty 

 years old, was noticed about the year 1839 by 

 Captain Bevan, Commandant of the place, who 

 thought the circumstance sufficiently interesting 

 to be specially reported to the Government of the 

 day. 



The systematic culture of the plant by Europeans 

 does not appear to have been begun in India 

 more than about thirty years ago, although I re- 

 member seeing it stated, in an old work dated 

 1802, that coffee had then been some time under 



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