96 



Mr. Bamber, is in vogue in almost all the best tea culture in Ceylon 

 Dr. Watt is emphatically opposed to it on account of its little manu- 

 n'al value, apart from the ash (which can be returned to the land 

 in any case), and because he believes it to be a means of spreading 

 blights. He writes : 



" But for the use of such expressions as " fancy " and " unaccountable " applied to a 

 question of this nature, I should have regarded the burying* of prunings as one that had 

 only to be mentioned in order to secure that the practice would in future be rigorously 

 prohibited. Even admitting that there is a slight manurial advantage by so doing, some 

 of the most serious maladies to which tea is subject are thereby distributed all over the 

 garden. It will pay the planter ten times over to incur the expense of purchasing 

 chemical manure, that will give to the soil as much, if not more, Nitrogen and other 

 materials than are contained in the prunings. By burying them he risks the perpetuation 

 and extension of many insect and fungoid pests that harbour ou the shoots when the 

 periods of their inactivity occur In a garden, * * * I pulled out of the ground many 

 projecting twigs of partially buried prunings, and showed * * * that they contained, in their 

 active condition, the spore bearing structures of red rust These prunings had been buried 

 in the autumn, and had thus continued for months to distribute the disease. Red Rust had 

 made its appearance in the garden a few years previously, and had been spreading to an 

 alarming extent, and no wonder, since, year after year, by burying the prunings the malady 

 had been carried from affected to healthy bushes." 



Dr. Watt then goes on to instance the spread of thread blight 

 and of other enemies of the tea bush by the same means, and finally 

 recommends that everything should be burnt advice which has been 

 very largely adopted, more especially in Upper Assam, since his day. 



There is no doubt that this advice is far and away the safest in 

 every case, it may be perhaps that more spores of grey blight are 

 blown about and alight on other bushes by carrying off the plot to 

 burn than by sweeping them immediately into a trench and cover- 

 ing up, but such cases are isolated in the extremeand under all 

 conditions the burning of prunings is *ar and away the safest way, 

 always making a point of returning the ashes to the land. This 

 returning the ashes to the land is always a difficulty. On one of the 

 best managed gardens in Upper Assam last year, I found the ashes 

 from several acres spread over a strip a few yards wide. If this 

 is done serious depletion of the land takes place, and it surely is 

 comparatively little trouble to see that the ashes are effectively 

 distributed over the land from which they were taken. Burning, 

 therefore, is the ideal way of disposing of prunings, especially if the 

 Nitrogen thus dissipated be returned to the land by means of a 

 leguminous green manuring crop the following spring. In heavy 

 pruning this green manuring should always be carried out, as 



