CEYLON COCOA ESTATE \7 



and filtered, without the risk of enteric fever. 

 Perhaps in a few years salaries may be re- 

 adjusted. 



Raneetotem is, in the main, a cacao Estate 

 with just a little coffee, also pepper, rubber, 

 vanilla, cotton, and cocoanuts but no tea. In 

 the old days it was all planted with coffee, but 

 came to grief in the time of Ceylon's great 

 disaster, when the coffee diseases ruined 

 numbers of great Estates which had to be 

 abandoned, or sold just for what they would 

 fetch. Since then cocoa has been planted 

 here on several hundred acres, and bids fair to 

 do well. Cocoa is a very handsome plant, or 

 rather shrub, growing to a height of from 6 

 to 1 8 feet. The flowers are insignificant 

 and appear almost stalkless on the stems and 

 branches, but they produce large pods, five or 

 six inches in length of every shade of red, and 

 also yellow, according to the variety of cocoa. 

 Caracas, which is the original kind introduced 

 from Trinidad and still commands top price, 

 has bright red pods, whilst those of Forastero 

 a coarser, and some think, a hardier variety, are 

 in many shades of red, orange, yellow, and 

 even white. Cocoa was first brought to Ceylon 

 as an ornamental shrub some fifty years ago. 

 There is an old tree of that age in Kalutera, 

 another on Keenakelle Estate, Badulla, at 

 4,000 feet above sea level, and several in 



