434 EFFECTS OF THE COMPOSITION 



Copy of a Letter from George Sulivan Marten, Esq. 



Enston, Oxfordshire ^ July 30, 1800, 



Sir, 



Understanding there exists some 

 doubt how far your vegetable plaster answers in 

 hot climates, I cannot in justice hesitate to inform 

 you, that it was in constant and successful use not 

 only in my own garden, in the district of Trinsi- 

 velly, four hundred miles South of Madras, but 

 also in the Company's Cinnamon Plantation, which 

 I had the pleasure of forming there, and where, 

 from the method of cultivating that spice, the 

 trees are always cut down to stumps. Your plas- 

 ter at these times was always appHed, which stop- 

 ped the bleeding, and hastened out the shoot (from 

 whence the best Cinnamon is taken) much quicker 

 than the former mode (and which is still practised 

 in Ceylon, 1 believe) of heaping the earth over 

 them. Nor was my experience confined; for, 

 when I quitted India, in October, 1798, I left one 

 hundred and fifty thousand trees and plants in the 

 Trinsivelly Plantations, all of which I had planted 

 from the seed of two trees brought from the 



1 



