50 



COFFEE. 



in the shape of parchment coffee. Jackals and monkeys occasionally 

 do the same, and a deer will now and then come from the forest and 

 nibble the tops of the young trees ; but these are not serious injuries. 

 Far more so, are those arising from the trespass of the buffalo. 



The coffee leaf fungus, Hemilia vastatrix, is another anxiety of the 

 coffee planters. Leaf disease in coffee has now assumed an aspect so 

 serious that the fullest possible investigation into its cause or causes, 

 nature, effect, and the possible remedies, can no longer be avoided. 



Very contradictory are the opinions of jjlanters themselves with 

 reference to this pest of the coffee tree. We have heard from more 

 than one quarter that sj)lendid crops follow severe attacks of leaf 

 disease ; from another that short crops are the result. One planter 

 will tell you that trees badly affected one season show little sign of 

 the disease the next, while others say that the trees worst affected one 

 year are similarly circumstanced under subsequent appearances of the 

 disease on their estates. At certain periods of the growth of the tree, 

 young branches seem to be perfectly free from disease, and yet they 

 become affected gradually at a later stage. Fui'ther experience of the 

 characteristics of the disease is evidently required before definite con- 

 clusions as to its course and incidence can be arrived at, and it would 

 be well to have the results of the observation of experienced planters 

 in order to aid scientific inquiry on the subject. 



It would be interesting and useful to know whether the disease is 

 more prevalent in a dry district than a wet one. Whether old trees 

 are attacked by it more readily than young. Whether old coffee that 

 has been manured with cattle manure, or other bulky manui'es, suffers 

 as much from it as coffee that has had chemical manures applied to it ; 

 and whether the aspect of the estate has anything to do with it, &c. 



Production in British India. — Passing from the island of Ceylon, 

 we reach the peninsula of India, where, under British enterprise, 

 coffee cultivation is making rapid progress from the greater facility 

 of obtaining labaur. It is this insuperable difiSculty which has 

 crippled production in our West Indian possessions, and led to the 

 transfer of the culture of many of the leading staples of commerce 

 from the western to the eastern hemisphere. 



Coffee is now a much more important article of agriculture in India, 

 Ceylon, Java, and Brazil, than in its native countries. It is not much 

 more than half a century ago that the coffee plant was first introduced 

 into Bengal. The origin of coffee culture in India is due to some 

 refugees from the Philippines, and has been detailed circumstantially 

 by the late Mr. J. S. Buckingham. Suffice it to say that about 1820 

 an insurrection of the native Indians of the Philippine Islands, against 

 their conquerors the Spaniards, di'ove almost every white man from that 

 country, and some few of these sought refuge in Calcutta. Among 

 others were two Frenchmen, who had been for some years successful 

 cultivators of coffee at Manila, but who, though wealthy by their 

 possessions there, barely escaped with their lives. A subscription 

 was raised for them by the merchants, money advanced, the requisite 

 land purchased, the coffee plant cultivated on it ; and from this source 

 has sprung all the subsequent increase which makes the present pro- 

 duction of India about 50,000,000 lbs. 



