CAPSICUMS 369 



manure, which is freely used on the vegetables and 

 other garden produce. 



Manure must only be given in the afternoon at four 

 or five o'clock. To the habit of giving manure at mid- 

 day when it is hottest, or to giving manure too strong 

 and unmixed with water, he attributes the rotting of 

 the chili fruits before they are ripe. 



This rotting of the fruits, I presume, is really the 

 destruction of the fruits by Gloeosporium, or other 

 fungus diseases. It is always an understood thing that 

 liquid manure, and indeed pure water, should not be 

 given to a plant in full sun during the hot part of the 

 day in the tropics. All applications of liquids or water- 

 ing should be given to the plant either in the early 

 morning or, by preference, in the evening not long 

 before sundown. Possibly, in the case of liquid manure, 

 the absorption during the day is too rapid, and the 

 diluted manure has the same effect as undiluted 

 administered later in the day. 



Of course, the administration of too strong manure 

 does not actually directly produce the fungus, but it 

 probably so far weakens the plant that it is readily 

 affected by it. Over-manured plants of any kind are 

 apt to show the results in the pale yellow colouring of 

 the leaves, quite similar to that caused 1 by starvation or 

 disease of the roots. 



In Singapore the price fluctuates from 15 cents to 

 90 cents a catty. The latter price is very high, and is 

 said to be caused by a scarcity due to the heavy and 

 continuous rains. 



When the crop is very abundant and the capsicums 

 are cheap, the fruit that is unsold is dried on mats in 

 the sun, but no regular drying system is in vogue, nor 

 is there any attempt to make cayenne pepper. The 

 capsicums are very extensively used fresh with the rice 

 and dried fish which forms the ordinary native food. 

 Dried capsicums, however, are imported very extensively 

 from India. Natives say that the locally dried capsicum 

 has not the flavour of the dried Indian fruit. It is 



2 B 



