224 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF TEA. 



The greatest expense connected with cultivation is, 

 naturally, opening the soil or digging; the spade is never 

 used in India and would not answer. Coolies dig with a 

 kodali, a thing something like a spade, with the handle set 

 at right angles to the blade. Could we dispense with this, 

 and cultivate between the lines of Tea with ploughs of any 

 suitable pattern, whether worked by steam or animal power, 

 an enormous saving would be effected. I am sure the whole 

 space between two lines of Tea can never be so done, round 

 each and every bush the soil must be opened by hand ; but 

 the centre space, say about i\ to 3 feet, could, I am 

 convinced, be so worked, and I think it is only a question 

 of time when it will be so treated. 



The planting community are gradually appreciating the 

 fact that something may be done in this way. The following 

 appeared in the Tea Gazette, end of 1881, re ploughing by 

 steam : 



PLOUGHING v. HOEING. 



Dear Sir, I am glad to see by the letter of a " Man in the 

 Kundah " that some managers have taken tip the idea of ploughing 

 instead of hoeing. It is an idea which I have been dinning into the ears 

 of Tea planters ever since I saw a Tea garden. Mr. Lyell deserves 

 credit, and so will everyone who assists to introduce ploughing 

 instead of hoeing. The saving of labour would be immense. The 

 gentlemen who are interested in the subject will be glad to learn that 

 I wrote home last month to several leading agricultural machinery 

 people asking the fullest particulars as to steam ploughing machinery, 

 with a view to seeing how far suitable it would be for Tea cultivation. 

 As soon as all my information arrives, and I have thought the matter 

 out, I will give the planting community my opinion. I have, as far as 

 I am personally concerned, already formed it, and am confident that 

 at no very distant date the steam plough will supersede the dhangar or 

 other hand labour. But of course I must make out a strong case for 

 it, or my opinions would be supposed to arise from a professional 

 predilection for machinery. F. 



Siligoorie, 2jth November, 1882. 



