121 



form a mat on top of the clay, and it is only by heavy cultivation 

 that this state of affairs can be altered. 



As above stated, between the Rangagora road and the line of 

 railway, there lie immense stretches of grass land, which have produced 

 some of the very best gardens in Assam. On this land, for instance, 

 is the Panitola garden of the Jokai Company, on which the following 

 analysis of the virgin soil was taken. By its side is the analysis of 

 the same soil which has been under tea for 26 to 28 years. 



The one objection to grass land soils that, being covered 

 with a surface feeding root system, they are only rich near the 

 surface, and are exhausted comparatively quickly is shown by these 

 numbers, and still more so by the following determinations of the 

 available plant-food material in the same virgin and old tea soils 

 respectively. 



The result of such exhaustion can only be a deterioration in 

 quality as well as in yield. The former can be kept up for some 

 time by continued closer and closer plucking, but even this will 

 finally come to a point when plucking can become no closer and 

 finer, and the value of the tea is bound to become less and less. 



