78 



COFFEE. 



marks, if only the Hemileia vastatrix would take to itself wings and 

 flee away, tliey would be able to bold tbeir own against all com- 

 petitors, certainly against Java, rich as its soil may be. Can a soil be 

 too rich ? Mr. Abbay suggests the possibility, and certainly it would 

 seem that the climate is, at any rate in the lower elevations, too 

 forcing. A Ceylon planter might well be pardoned some tinge of 

 envious feeling as he reads of subsoil and top-soil, equally rich ; but 

 he may well stand aghast when he learns that on such rich stratum 

 and substratum, coffee trees and shade trees require to be cut down at 

 the end of each fifteen years, the process being possible three times 

 in succession, with the last garden better than the first ! Of course 

 the silk cotton trees must yield, at each renovation, a large supply of 

 humus, apart from the natural richness of the soil ; but we should 

 like to see the profit and loss account of the plantings and re- 

 plantings. Were there such soil in Ceylon, the planters would do 

 their best to make the first planting " permanent," at least to the 

 extent of the thirty-five years involved in the three processes ; but a 

 climate which renders the use of shade trees universal must have an 

 influence on coffee planting in Java to which we ought to allow due 

 weight, having before our eyes the results of abandoning shade in 

 the case of such low, hot districts in Ceylon as Kurnegala, Kadu- 

 gannava, &c. 



The 'Ceylon Observer ' remarks upon this: — "It is quite a new 

 idea, and also a contrast to the general conditions in Ceylon, that the 

 soil on the higher mountain slopes should be poorer than that at low 

 elevations. For the rest, experiments on old Hantane, which we 

 noticed a few years ago, told most favourably of the renovating effects 

 of Lantana, the roots of which open up the soil, while its dropped 

 leaves and seeds cover the sm'face with a moist, warm carpeting 

 of humus. On a fair proportion of our soils, we have no doubt that 

 coffee can a second time be grown after a period of seven to ten years 

 following under Lantana. But in general what we look for is this : 

 That with the facilities for manuring, &c., offered by railway exten- 

 sion, the present young and vigorous coffee estates may attain a 

 profitable permanency, of about half a century (Mr. Abbay does not 

 see why a centenarian tree should not yield profitably), and that then 

 coffee should give place to tea, cinchona, and other equally profitable 

 products. Those who ask ' Where will Ceylon and its railway be 

 when coffee goes out ? ' are looking too far ahead in one sense, while 

 their vision is miserably limited on the other hand. Humanity, 

 human discovery, invention, and enterprise are not likely to stand 

 still, but rather to advance at accelerated speed. A score of years 

 ago and the idea of cinchona in Ceylon had not been breathed ; but in 

 ten years, from this time we ventm'e to predict that Ceylon will con- 

 tain more cinchona trees than the rest of the world, old and new, put 

 together. And so the tea enterprise is advancing, and will advance. 

 Cocoanuts and cinnamon are also going ahead. Therefore we may well 

 trust to the future of Ceylon while we do our duty in the present, send- 

 ing well-pulped, washed and prepared coffee into the markets of the 

 world; and probably by the time Brazil and Java have gone any 

 length in copying our example, the plague of leaf disease may have 



