48 

 CHAPTER 6, 



NURSERIES. Their formation and treatment, with casual 

 remarks on class of iree change of seed acclimati- 

 zation. 



Much of the future welfare of an Estate depends on 

 having a really healthy supply of Vigorous plants in the 

 Nurseries* In former years no attention whatever was paid 

 to this important subject and Planters contented themselves 

 with, either jungle plants, or made Nurseries of the " two 

 leaf" seedlings always to be found in profusion under the 

 old coffee. Such plants in virgin soil came on and gave 

 great satisfaction and no one seemed to entertain any pre- 

 judice against them until the Estates required vacancies to 

 be supplied after the land had been well cropped with coffee. 

 I shall be within the mark considerably if 1 state that plants 

 sufficient to have planted the whole of the forest land in 

 Mysore have been planted in vain in the few planting 

 Talooks within the last 15 years. Some conception of the 

 loss under this head may be realized when it is known that 

 one proprietor has accounts to show that over a million Nur - 

 sery plants have passed out of his Nurseries during the 

 period extending between 18(55 and 1873, in the vain en- 

 deavour to plant up the vacancies in an Estate of a little over 

 450 acres. Year after year holes were cleaned out and 

 manured, and yet the plants steadily refused to grow. In 

 the latter year a Mysore Planter of experience visited 

 Coorg and came back with glowing accounts of the bearing 

 capabilities and suitable character of the Coorg variety of 

 plant* Seed was procured, and Nurseries made on all sorts 

 of systems, and yet nearly every plant that was properly 

 established in the Mysore Plantations has succeeded and 

 how quite a new Era for the Mysore Planter has commenced. 

 The reclamation of Estates that had been virtually abandon- 



