' 224 THE ENEMIES OF COFFEE :—WHITE GRUB, 
and the leaf fungus; but neither did he anticipate the 
largely compensating increase of prices which has taken 
place. But for this, where should we be? In my own 
- case, having ‘‘ done my duty by the land ” in the shape 
of forking, liming and manuring, my return for the 
season now closing will be somewhat less than what I - 
got three years ago from a bearing acreage less, prob- 
ably, by one-fourth. I am comforted by being again 
told to look out for the grand results of ‘‘ next year,” 
the show of bearing wood being all that could be wished. 
As my experience 1s only too general, it is interesting to 
trace, if possible, the exact cause. My inclination is to 
say ‘‘ Mainly the weakening influence of hemileia 
- vastatrix.” 1tappeared on the plants in my first nursery 
in 1872 and blackened off the ends of the primaries of 
my finest plants in 1874 and 1875. Since then it has 
only occasionally displayed itself obviously to the out- 
ward senses, but it has been ‘‘all there” all the time 
at its vampire-like work. Passing by a most destructive 
visitation of rats, in which whole primaries and whole 
plants were cut down as with a sharp knife, I may say 
that grubs have only recently reached me, and I cannot 
join some neighbours in violating chronology as well as 
science by asserting that grub is the cause of leaf 
disease! Tenterden steeple and Goodwin Sands are 
surely more intimately connected. It would, in my 
opinion, be as scientifically logical to say that the leaf 
fungus had by a process of evolution generated grubs,— 
the worthy progeny of the cursed (cursory remarks must 
really be excused) cockchafers. Consulting ‘‘ experienced 
and intelligent planters” has the same effect as going 
out into the smoke which is drifting down from the 
patanas. I heard the groans with which the Dimbula 
planters greeted Mr. Cantlay’s plea for the grubs :— 
** Did ever any gentleman see a grub with a coffee root 
in its mouth ?”. The question was literally yelled down. 
But lo ! here comes Friend Dixou laden with Science and 
armed with an all-revealing microscope, and he pro- 
nounces the cockchafer’s grub to be as much a friend to 
the planters as he desires to be himself! His theory 
was stated to me in the keen cold of this morning, and 
Irepeated it subsequently in the blazing sunlight toa 
planter who was guiding and encouraging some scores of 
coolies in cutting a road through my best coffee and my . 
finest seed-bearing tea bushes and cinchonas. He 
took up a coffee-root from which a mamoty had scraped 
off the bark, and he said, in answer to my question as 
to the inability of coffee bushes to ripen their crop, 
“The main cause,” he said, ‘‘ is certainly grub ; for I 
have taken up trees which were destitute of feeding 
rootlets and the large roots of which were bare like that,” 
