Growing Importance. 239 



recent years that the attention of the planting 

 community of India and Ceylon has been given to 

 the subject in downright earnest, and its vital im- 

 portance to have been practically admitted by them. 

 This it is not very difficult to account for. While 

 land remained cheap and plentiful, the simple but 

 wasteful method of opening up new estates as soon 

 as the old ones began to be exhausted, seemed 

 always preferable to an intricate and laborious 

 study of the best means of preserving land already 

 under cultivation ; and even now, planters pursuing 

 their avocation in comparatively new districts 

 openly advocate the system referred to. In Ceylon 

 and elsewhere, however, where the forest and other 

 land still available for cultivation is yearly diminish- 

 ing in extent, and, under the influence of high 

 prices for the staple in the European markets, in- 

 creasing in value, so that instead of from 2 to 5 

 per acre, it has now become a question of from 

 10 to 25, the subject begins to assume a different 

 aspect, and can no longer be evaded. 



Treated generally, the object of manuring is to 

 return to soil originally fertile, those constituents 

 in which it has become deficient by cultivation ; or, 

 in some cases, to add certain constituents which the 

 soil has never possessed, but without which it is un- 

 suited for some particular growth. It will thus be 

 seen, that soils naturally sterile are capable of being 



