180 HINTS ON PLANTING. 
turned sour and injured the trees. It will be at once 
suggested that grub may account for the poor display 
of rootlets in many localities; but very possibly repeated 
attacks of leal disease are no less to blame, and 
it would seem possible now, that, as a planting com- 
munity, we ought to have paid more particular atten- 
tion to our nursery seed since 1869, perhaps treating 
it as South Australian farmers do their wheat for rust ~ 
before sowing. Rust, like leaf disease, is purely ex- 
ternal in its action, but the spores are ubiquitous—on 
the straw and seed (on the trees and _ beans), 
and while the former is burnt, the latter is rubbed 
in lime or ashes. Coffee seed so treated might possi- 
bly escape early attacks of the disease in the nursery. 
Still more important is the question raised by our 
intelligent correspondent, Mr. Crickitt, who also bases 
his argument on the parallel experience gained in the © 
case of pedigree wheat, and more lately with speci- 
ally selectéd potatoes. There is certainly grave reason 
why any further nurseries of coffee in Ceylon should ~ 
be sown with foreign seed, which, however, ought in 
every case to be rubbed in ashes or dipped in a solu- 
tion of sulphate of copper to get rid of external 
spores, before planting. Experiments in this direction 
are well worthy of attention. 
It is sometimes remarked that careless planting, 
turned-up roots, poor plants and small holes have a 
good deal to do with weak coffee and short crops — 
in the younger districts. The foolish boast of many 
pioneers about the hundreds of acres they planted 
each season has only to be recalled to remind us of 
the practice of planters of the best type in the old 
favourite districts, never to add more than fifty acres 
to cultivation under one superintendent in one year. 
This ensured proper supervision of the work and a 
careful selection of plants. There can be no doubt 
that the valuator or purchaser of a plantation now-a- 
days ought to be particular in his enquiries as to the 
planting and the reputation of the man under whose 
care the work was done, 
Our system of clean weeding is now challenged, 
and reasons are adduced sufficient to warrant experi- 
ments in another direction. Certain old Uva planters 
hazard the opinion that coffee ftourished better in the 
era when clean weeding was unknown! ‘Often, ” 
says a well-known visiting agent, ‘‘have I called the 
** attention of young Dikoya planters to Abboo Drahim’s 
“estate in Ambagamuwa with its succession of heavy 
“ crops and his system of no weeding during the crop 
** season, thereby possibly helping to give his trees a 
“* much-needed rest in growth.” Weeds, it is supposed, 
