x INTRODUCTION. 
each plant would loosen the soil and render it more 
permeable, admit a free circulation of air, while some 
of the surface soil would fall into the holes and rifts made 
in the compact mass; it will be easier for the plant 
to extend its roots, and it will be encouraged to 
throw out laterals at a greater depth than if the 
walls of the hole remained unbroken. This operation 
might be repeated from time to time, extending the 
area operated on round each plant, on every repeti- 
tion, and thus not only rendering (the soil more per- 
meable but benefiting the plant directly. When the 
roots of the original forest are sufficiently decayed to 
render the operation comparatively easy, the whole. 
guriace may be broken, up with the pronged mamo- 
tie, and from twelve to twenty bushels of lime per 
acre forked in according to the comparative stiffness 
of the soil. 
I have been met with the objection, that loose 
soil is naturally much more easily carried off by wash 
than if it were an unbroken, and compact surface. To 
those who have advanced this objection I have always. 
replied: ‘‘Go and try : question nature, by experi- 
ment.” When a heavy rainfall has only the 
scratchings of the karandi to deal with, it makes 
short work of then, but there is a fresh supply after 
every weeding, by which, in afew years, you get 
down to ,the till! having disposed of all your true 
soil; but if you break it up a foot deep, and. leave 
the surface rough and cloddy, the quantity of water 
it will absorb is amazing, while such part of the 
supply as it cannot dispose of will reach the next 
drain, not by surface flow but by permeation. 
NOTE ON MANURING. 
While of late years Ceylon has been making pro- 
gress in the knowledge by which suitable fertilizing 
substances are scientifically selected, there are probably 
still wide divergence of opinions, among practical planters 
in respect to the best mode of applying them. Since 
the controversy was at the hottest in 1871, it has. 
cropped up from time to time, in the correspondence 
columns of the Observer; without bringing forward 
anything novel or original. There is hardly any 
possible way of applying manure to the coffee plant, 
