LAYING OUT A GARDEN. 43 



The best plan is simply to number the gardens from I 

 upwards, and the sections in each garden the same way. 

 Thus supposing No. 5 garden is divided into three sections, 

 they will be known respectively as 5-1, 5-2, and 5-3. This 

 is the best way for the natives, and I find they soon learn to 

 designate each section. I have a man whose special duty 

 (though he has other work also) it is to see each day which 

 sections are ready to pick the following, and those, and those 

 alone, are picked. Practice soon teaches the number of 

 pickers required for any given number of sections, and that 

 number only are put to the work. If a portion is not 

 completed that day, it is the first taken in hand the next, and 

 if any day on no sections is the flush ready, no leaf is picked 

 the following. 



Apart from leaf-picking, the garden and section plan 

 detailed is useful in many ways. Each garden, if not each 

 section which most requires it, is dug, pruned, or manured at 

 the best time, and any spot on the plantation is easily desig- 

 nated. The plan facilitates the measurement of work, and 

 enables correct lists of the flushes gathered to be kept. It is 

 thus seen which gardens yield best, and the worst can, by 

 extra manuring, be brought to equal those. 



In short, the advantages are many, too numerous to 

 detail. 



Of course all this can be better done on a flat garden than 

 on one planted on slopes, and though it may not be possible 

 to work it out as much in detail on the latter, still a good 

 deal in that way can be done, and I strongly recommend it. 



In laying out a plantation keep it all as much together as 

 possible, the more it is in one block the easier it is supervised, 

 the cheaper it is worked. Still do not, with a view to this, 

 take in any bad land, for bad land will never pay. 



Let your lines of Tea plants, as far as practicable, run 

 with geometrical regularity. You will later find, both in mea- 



