58 ‘THE COFFEE PLANTER OF CEYLON.” 
bara, induiges largely in a species of pride which 
we should wish to see generally prevalent. ‘This gen- 
tleman will take visitors over his numerous sets 
of lines and defy them to ‘‘feel a smell” (as the 
Scotch, with strict accuracy, put it). The planter 
ought to know and act on the conviction that, 
while nothing is so deadly as dirt in the wrong — 
place, nothing is more useful in the right place. 
Bone, dust and ashes are just like ‘‘ line manure”: 
dirt. Each requires to be properly manipulated and 
utilized instead of being allowed to run to waste 
or worse. But not only must the European superin- 
tendent of a coffee plantation know how to com- 
bat the propensities of a race, whose best friends 
do not claim for them the merit of cleanliness,—he 
must not only know how to convert dirt from a 
source of disease into a source of fertility, but he 
must know at least enough of the principles of 
medicine and surgery contained in the Medical 
Hints which have been prepared for his use, to 
be able to treat or guide the treatment of disease 
and ordinary accident amongst his laborers. Even 
in the healthiest districts, fevers and bowel diseases 
will ogeur, coolies will cut their fingers or toes 
and get bitten by noxious reptiles. The superin= 
tendent must be ready to treat simple cases, and 
have intelligence enough to know where cases are 
beyond his control, and conscience enough to give 
such cases at once the benefit of those splendid 
and well-regulated hospitals at Gampola and else- 
where—so palatial in their beauty and airiness that 
we can imagine patients feigning sickness in 
order to remain in them. [We shall not soon 
forget the favourable impression resulting from a 
visit to that truly magnificent hospital which the 
Government of Ceylon has provided, mainly for 
the treatment of coolies, at Gampola. Mr. Keyt 
keeps it so, that the only odour possibly perceptible 
is that of the flowers in the neat garden plots. | 
But it is in natural and chemical science that 
the planter must specially posses:, and be ever 
acquiring, knowledge. Acquaintance with the prin- 
ciples of geology and mineralogy will enable the 
planter to form a fair idea of the soil he is 
called to work on. A knowledge of its constituents 
will enable him to judge what the soil requires 
for the continued and healthy growth of a plant 
over severely pruned and handled into yielding 
the maximum of a most exhausting crop. [Big 
words, such as geology and mineralogy, ought not 
to frighten any planter. The well-known planter 
who ‘‘ hangs out” somewhere below Hunasgiriya 
