376 



NA TURE 



\Aug. 31, 1876 



cwts., and its value about 150,000/. The effect of this 

 sudden impulse to the enterprise was seen six years after- 

 wards, in 1846, in the export rising to 178,000 cwts. In 

 1855 it was close upon half-a-million, and in 1868 some- 

 what over a million cwts., valued at the low rate of about 

 50J. per cwt., and grown on an area, including native 

 coffee gardens, of about 200,000 acres. In the (ollowing 

 year ^'leaf disease" {Hemileia vastati'ix), a species of 

 fungus covering the under surface of the coffee-leaf with 

 an orange-red coloured dust composed of the ripe spores 

 of the fungus, appeared on a newly- opened estate in 

 Madulsima, and within a very short time spread over all 

 the coffee-producing districts in the island. The ravages 

 of the pest have been so great that the annual production 

 of cofiee has been reduced to less than two-thirds of 

 what it ought to have been, and the loss to the colony 

 can only be estimated at many millions of pounds ster- 

 hng. But this subject will be referred to later ; at present 

 we must attempt to give some idea of the character of 

 the country in which the great staple of the island 

 grows. Ceylon, as is pretty generally known, consists, 

 roughly speaking, of a large central mass of mountains, 

 attaining an elevation in one case of more than 8,000 feet, 

 and surrounded on all sides by low country. This moun- 

 tain region, as well as the low country, is composed al- 

 most entirely of primary rock (gneiss), and bears such a 

 striking resemblance to the Western Ghaut Range of 

 Southern India, that the island may be considered as an 

 isolated portion of that continent, separated, perhaps, 

 during the upheaval of both by the strong monsoon 

 currents that set continually along the coasts of India, ac- 

 cording as the sun is north or south of the line. It is not im- 

 probable that other stratified rocks have once overlaid the 

 ancient gneiss, but no rock less tough could long withstand 

 the torrential rains of the south-west monsoon and the 

 injurious effects of a tropical sun. If any such have 

 formerly existed, every trace of them has long ago been 

 washed down to the low country or the sea. It is true 

 that at one spot on the western coast, apparently pro- 

 tected from the violence of the monsoon rains, and where, 

 , consequently, the rainfall is very slight, the remnant of a 

 fossiliferous limestone of very limited extent is to be met 

 with, but this, I believe, is the one solitary exception, and 

 its relation to the gneiss formation of the rest of the island 

 and to the coast of Southern India, has not, 1 imagine, been 

 sufficiently explained. At the present time the soil of 

 Ceylon is formed exclusively jjy the disintegration of 

 gneiss rock, the debris of which settles in protected spots 

 and on slopes not too steep for its accumulation. In its 

 natural state it is nearly always very strongly tinged with 

 red, and to an ordinary observer appears to be of a very 

 poor character. This no doubt is really the case, but it 

 affords standing-ground for trees and other forms of 

 vegetable life, and a forcing climate does the rest. With 

 a rainfall over the greater part of the mountain zone of 

 more than 100 inches, in some places more than 200 

 inches in the year, distributed chiefly between the middle 

 of May and the end of December and with such a rapid 

 descent from the upper mountain slopes to the low 

 country — the great river of the island, the Mahawelli- 

 ganga, descends at the average rate of ninety feet per mile 

 lor the first sixty or seventy miles of its course — it was only 

 to be expected that extremely deep valleys, steep slopes 

 and precipices, and a general waterworn aspect should be 

 met with on every side. These features are so marked 

 throughout the coffee- producing districts, that it is by no 

 means unusual to find the upper portion of a block of 300 

 acres some 1,800 or 2,000 feet above the lower, and the 

 whole estate nothing more than a series of rounded spurs 

 and deep ravines, with here and there a precipice of con- 

 siderable height, with an accumulation of rocks about its 

 base. It is at the foot of these cliffs that the best soil for any 

 purpose of cultivation is found, whilst the worst is gene- 

 rally on the most exposed parts of the spurs. This is no 



doubt due to the accumulation of vegetable mould, and 

 the nutritive properties of the decaying rocks, which is 

 possible in the one case, but not in the other, to any great 

 extent. It is to the former of these substances, to the 

 result of ages of forest growth and decay, that coffee estates 

 owe their chief value ; without it they are almost worth- 

 less, as may be seen in the case of old estates, whose 

 surface- soil has been washed away through want of 

 drainage or on the grassy slopes of ^«/««rtJ, where jungle 

 has never grown, and where of course there is no humus. 

 On either it is next to impossible to grow coffee profitably. 

 As these patanas or patches of poor grass land in the 

 midst of luxuriant forest form one of the most striking 

 features of the mountain scenery of Ceylon, and as no 

 satisfactory explanation has as yet been given of them, it 

 may be well to mention that a band of quartzite (meta- 

 morphosed sandstone) several hundred feet in thick- 

 ness, occupies a definite place in the gneiss series of the 

 mountain zone, and that wherever this is found cropping 

 out, and by its disintegration forming the surface-soil, 

 there we are certain to fini the ground of such miserable 

 quality that nothing but a coarse and all but worthless 

 grass will grow. This, however, does not fully explain 

 the phenomenon. It may be noticed as against the 

 theory that these patanas are due to the frequent burnings 

 by the natives after the land has once been cleared of 

 jungle, and then allowed to fall into grass, that, however 

 land that has once been jungle may be exhausted by bad 

 cultivation, its tendency is not to run into grass, but to 

 relapse into a kind of scrub, and thence in time into 

 jungle — a tendency which is never seen in patana land. 

 The best estates, the climates being similar, are where the 

 humus is deepest, or where its constituents have been 

 carried furthest by percolation into a friable soil. The 

 protection of this humus and upper soil is the first and 

 most important duty of the planter on a new estate, and 

 the drainage, therefore, at the outset, is rendered as com- 

 plete as possible. 



An idea of the rate at which the surface soil even of old 

 and well-worn estates is carried away, may be formed 

 from the fact that sVth part by weight of the surface- 

 water passing down a stream in Puisellawa — one of the 

 oldest and best coffee districts— alter a heavy shower was 

 found by the writer to be earthy matter ; a startling obser- 

 vation indeed, but one that fairly agrees with an estimate 

 made, after considerable experience, that one of the above- 

 mentioned old estates had suffered denudation since it 

 was opened more than thirty years ago, at the rate of 

 about one-third of an inch per annum. This is a startling 

 fact and suggests the inquiry, When will the land available 

 for coffee in Ceylon be used out or washed away ? It is 

 already nearly all occupied, and it seems that before long, 

 that is, within a score or two of years, in spite of all the 

 exertions of the modern planter, all its fertile properties 

 will be irrecoverably lost. Forest growth and decay have 

 created the wealth of the Kandyan Province, and the 

 ignorant or careless planter of the past has as truly 

 wasted the natural resources of the country as if he 

 had destroyed all its coco-nut trees, only in the one 

 case the evil would be temporary— twenty years would 

 repair it ; in the other ten times that period Of abso- 

 lute rest would probably not restore the fertility to the 

 mountain slopes and bring them again to the state in 

 which the European found them. Land suitable for coffee 

 lies generally between 2,000 and S,ooo feet above the sea, 

 but the climate of the district and the aspect count for a 

 good deal. Estates from 3,000 to 4,000 feet in altitude are 

 considered the best, the plants then being neither burnt up 

 by the hot sun of lower elevations nor ruined by the black- 

 bug — really a fungus, Capnoaium, thriving on the honey- 

 dew secretion of the bug Lecanium Coffece, and often 

 m.istaken for it — which is a sure visitor of high and wet 

 estates. An eastern slope is generally preferred, but what 

 effect the early sun produces I have never been able to 



