Cultivation of the Orange and Lemon. 99 



orange seeds thickly, in January and February, in 

 troughs or boxes. He has also seen them sown in a 

 canoe, but preferably they are sown on raised ma- 

 clians (there called machang] to keep them out of 

 the reach of pigs. Nets are also thrown over them 

 to keep off rats and squirrels. The mac/idn is a 

 raised platform, on supports, made of bamboo matting, 

 well supported beneath by slabs of betel palm. On 

 these about six inches of soil is laid. These nurseries 

 can be located anywhere. They are well looked after 

 till the seedlings get through their first few leaves. In 

 the ensuing rains they are pricked out in a second 

 nursery, in the ground, by shaking the earth from 

 their roots, without injury. They are eventually 

 planted out in gardens. 



In the Indian Agriculturist of loth October, 1885, 

 an " Old Mallee " writes that he " realizes eight annas 

 a score for Sylhet oranges, which he grows in Bengal ; 

 that his income from orange growing is Rs. 700 per 

 acre, at 10 feet apart." This, he says is too close. The 

 expenses of growing them he puts down at Rs. 100, so 

 that he nets Rs. 600 per acre.' He considers well- 

 decayed night-soil, cowdung, and black tank-soil, with 

 an admixture of slaked lime, or old mortar finely 

 powdered, the best manure for orange trees. He 

 buds on the khatta stock. He grows principally the 

 Sylhet suntara variety, but has also the Delhi 

 suntara. The latter variety, he says, does not fruit 

 so well in Bengal as the former. He says he has been 

 an orange grower for thirteen years, and has found that 

 after the trees have given a full crop for three succes- 

 sive years they begin to die off most unaccountably.* 



* Probably from exhaustion. In the Azores, before dying, the 

 trees produced enormous crops. Ruraphius mentions the same 

 thing. 



H 2 



