16 



burying prunings, but here the danger, at any rate in the latter case, 

 is very great of spreading blights over the garden, ^and one cannot 

 recommend it as a system and as a rule. In bringing jungle into 

 the garden for burial there is danger likewise of spreading an enor- 

 mous number of weed seeds, which will grow most vigorously, and 

 take many years to eradicate. Nevertheless, there are cases where 

 the burial of jungle will be advisable, and of these we will treat in 

 another chapter (IV). 



One more method of increasing the tilth in a soil remains, but 

 it should be used sparingly. Lime has a very powerful effect in 

 forming compound particles in a soil, and the improvement of clay 

 soils by this means is a method well known in agriculture. Lime 

 however seems to be of little benefit to the tea plant, and if much 

 is present it may do positive harm. I doubt whether there is much 

 opening for its use as a means of dealing with stiff tea soils in 

 Assam. 



DESTRUCTION OF TILTH. 



Tilth, however produced, can be speedily destroyed. Careless 

 cultivation of stiff soil when wet is fatal to its continuance ; asunder 

 these circumstances the conditions of the pugmill of a brick yard are 

 more or less produced. Cultivation where there is a difficulty in ob- 

 taining good tilth as there is in Nowgong, in parts of Jorhat,in many 

 gardens in Sibsagar, in some places near Sonari, &c. &c. should be 

 done only when the soil is half dry or more, and at any rate never 

 during heavy rain, as is often actually the case. Long standing of 

 water on the surface will also ruin the tilth an important argu- 

 ment in favour of drainage, which would remove this standing 

 water in the vast majority of cases, 



DEPTH OF TEA SOILS. 



The second matter in connection with the physical nature 

 of the soil of especial importance for tea is its depth. Here the 

 greatest mistakes have been made. I have seen tea growing in 

 Assam with less than 2 feet of soil separating it from a layer of 

 solid rock, and it could neither get through, nor round, nor by the 

 obstacle and hence at every drought it nearly died, and one 

 wondered why it continued to exist at all. In other cases a friable 

 surface soil lays over a hard clay subsoil, and still has been put 



