9929 COFFEE AND TEA CULTIVATION. 
age which, it is obvious, will less attach to estates 
at a very high elevation than to those lower down. 
The Java scheme of catchment and renovation holes 
is, as Col. Money correctly points out, not new. A 
diagram which the printers can easily manage to 
represent will make the system clearer :— 
EE fogs Glee Expl bagel ase elk 1) 
eo eS ee 
If the ubiquitous scribe, who finds ‘‘my scheme”’ 
in every possible form of ‘‘agri-horticulture” pro- 
posed, claims this also, then we at once say, that 
the gentleman in Java makes holes to deposit weeds 
in and to catch soil. It has never occurred to him 
to place the trees themselves in water holes, or to 
encompass them with walls of circumvallation so as 
to ensure wet feet. Besides which, the question of 
cost and benefit in proportion to that cost are, as 
stated by Col. Money, questions for consideration. 
We know that many planters in Ceylon object to 
weed holes on estates, that, in very heavy rain-storms, 
the weeds and their seeds are washed out and spread 
by the overflowing water. But, the holes aside, we 
submit the hedge system as a good and in many cases 
the only possible mode of terracing. A better plant 
than tea might, perhaps, be adopted on coffee planta- 
tions, but in the case of tea estates there is the 
advantage of having one homogeneous product. Our 
own idea is that, on very elevated estates, the plan 
of planting 3x3, and having hedges of bushes only 
one foot apart at intervals across the faces of steeps, 
is preferable. But the Java scheme makes every cross- 
row 4 hedge or terrace. On an estate in the Darjiling 
district we saw tea planted, the rows 3 feet apart 
with the bushes only 1 foot apart in the rows. Our 
companion on the occasion, Mr. Gammie, objected 
that the roots would crowd each other. On the other 
hand, we may repeat that on the celebrated Datoorieh 
estate, the property of Colonel Fyers and Dr. Brougham, 
we were told the very largest return of tea for area 
was obtained from trees which had been allowed to 
grow up in a nursery. The bushes, packed closely 
together, were pigmies, compared to old trees which 
