132 COFFEE I ITS CULTIVATION AND PROFIT, 



money market. The first difficulty has never been really 

 grappled with, for on a Coffee estate it is usual to do but little 

 work from March to the end of May, and the coolies are paid 

 up and encouraged to go home during those months ; but the 

 second is a floorer. It is at once our admiration and despair 

 to see how the Ceylon planters with their Coffee gone, and 

 their cinchona bark selling for twopence a-pound go gaily 

 on, filling new land, buying expensive machinery, and behaving 

 generally as if they were in the most affluent circumstances." 



To return to Hemileia vastatrix, the Coffee-leaf 

 disease, it must be owned at once that no practical 

 remedy has yet been found to modify its ravages. 

 It is a minute fungus which first attacks the 

 under sides of the leaves, causing spots or blotches, 

 at first yellow, but subsequently turning black. 

 These blotches are, on examination, found to be 

 covered with a pale orange-coloured dust or powder 

 which easily rubs off. The blotches gradually in- 

 crease in size until at last they have spread over 

 the leaves, which then drop off, leaving the tree 

 in a short time perfectly bare, in which state they 

 are unable to produce crop or bring to perfection 

 the fruit they may have on them. 



Carbolic acid and fumigation with sulphur and 

 other substances have been tried, and an infinite 

 variety of theories started to account for the origin 

 of the spores. One correspondent writes from 

 Batavia : 



" Regarding Coffee planting, a great deal more is talked 

 about the leaf disease than is sanctioned by facts ; the truth is 

 that the disease was known long ago, for so far back as 1840 



