‘THE COFFEE PLANTER OF CEYLON,” 59 
peak, and who tells the Planters’ Association that 
‘*chocklat ” coloured soil, when friable, is good for coffee 
and amenable to manure, is a geologist and min- 
eralogist in his practical way, though he may 
not be able to classify the rock or name its main 
constituents.]| But to know what the requisite 
applications should be, and how the applications 
should be made, the planter, above all, perhaps, should 
havea competent knowledge of the science which 
Liebig and Johnson and Voelcker and others have so 
greatly advanced in our day—agricultural chemis- 
try. If able to try a few simple experiments, s0 
as to test soils, but especially to enable him ito 
judge of the quality of fertilizers imported and sent 
to the estate, so much the better. Bone dust may 
be impure or almost inert, and even superphos- 
phates may differ most materially in percentages 
‘of fertilizing qualities—just as spirits vary in the 
degrees of alcohol they contain. But there must 
be no slavish adherence to the results of mere ana- 
lysis. Substances poor in fertilizing properties may 
yet be eminently useful from their mechanical and 
chemical effect in warming and disintegrating soil 
naturally stiff and poor. Ifwe judge merely by 
Liebig’s analysis of the coarse lemon-grass mana, 
which covers such vast savannahs in the hill country 
of Ceylon, we should contemptuously dismiss it as 
valueless. Its ashes yield only 3 per cent of potash 
and 2 of chloride of potassa, against 814 0f silica 
(the latter the substance of which glass is made and 
which gives the straw of wheat and other corns and 
grasses its strong and shining covering). What help, 
therefore, can so wretchedly poor a substance yield 
to the planter ? Just this, that if it could be 
procured in sufficient quantity within a reasonable 
distance, so as to render its application possible at 
a moderate expense, a complete thatching of it would 
probably warm the stiff cold clays of Ambagamuwa 
and set free their fertilizing ingredients for the growth 
of coffee crops: crops whieh would compete with 
those gathered in Dimbulaat its best. The applica- 
tion of phosphates to the warmed and loosened soil 
could be usefully and remuneratively made. What 
we here incidentally notice is well worthy the seri- 
ous attention of planters. If grass for thatching 
soil cannot be procured great benefit might be ob- 
tained by a similar use of other substances not like- 
ly to leave seeds cf weeds or injurious insects be- 
hind them. Mr. Sabonadiére’s experience has led 
him to the decided conviction that to all the other 
good effects of an application of mana grass is to 
be added the eradication of the ‘‘ bug” blight from 
