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held up to hasten a conflict and while issues are being tried 

 the grateful Planter will gladly avail himself of the pro. 

 gressive development of hints and suggestions evolved by 

 this desirable process. We have alone to deal with stern 

 realities and a few dry facts founded 011 practical experience 

 and well conducted field experimeiits will help us much to 

 mitigate the evil we vainly hope to conquer. Let each 

 member of the Planting Community conduct experiments. 

 Let various manures be tried in different places and let care- 

 ful notes of results be recorded. Let each work out his 

 pet idea. Let mechanical operations be tried such as 

 drainage (surface and deep) pickaxing versus mam- 

 motying Hand weeding versus Scraping Manuring 

 the surface against manure buried iu trenches Bones 

 versus Poonac cattle manure versus compost of vegetable 

 matter, pulp, husk, and wood ashes, and last but not least ex- 

 periment with seed from various distant places, and let all 

 Planters opening in a new District try a ' ' steep " for their 

 seed say a lime and water or blue stone and water. Mark 

 the effect of digging in dry weather and compare such with 

 a similar operation performed in the rains. Closely attend 

 to the sad influence of Leaf Disease on " heavily" pruned 

 Coffee. Examine studiously the effect of the Fungus on 

 well matured shoots as compared with the wholesale havoc 

 in badly handled coffee. View and ascertain facts, relative 

 to the proportion or ratio of loss in the Chickmuglore, Coorg, 

 Ceylon and Rio varieties. These I maintain are a few 

 individual points for practical observation. Let the Planter 

 arrange these as types, orders, genera and groups, and I fancy 

 he will do himself a vast amount o good in the process. 

 Let, I say, each Association in Ceylon and Southern India 

 afford assistance in the collection of such facts and informa- 

 tion and I feel assured that there will be no occasion for 

 regret hereafter. In a criticism on my unassuming pro- 

 duction I have been told " to adopt a humbler strain and 



