74 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



forty years have failed to last, and from 

 evidence available it is reasonable to believe 

 that the productive life of a tea bush is 

 a question of treatment, soil and climate. 

 Given good soil, favourable climate, and judi- 

 cious handling, it would be difficult to assign a 

 limit to it. The bushes have been stricken by 

 hail, blight, flood and drought ; still they sur- 

 vive, and there is no record of complete failure 

 of a crop. The longevity of tea under careful 

 culture is established ; but on the other side 

 must be set the fact that from old bushes such 

 fiue quality as young ones give cannot every- 

 where be made, while land long cropped needs 

 much top-dressing, which entails expense ; so 

 prudent planters uproot old bushes to give place 

 to new, or make some fresh extension year 

 by year. 



Available Acreage. 



An official return enumerates about 530, U00 

 acres of tea in India, of which 21,367 are stated 

 to be immature, but some of the figures are 

 termed imperfect or inaccurate, and stress is 

 laid upon the fact that while the returns of 

 area show an increase of only 86 per cent since 

 1885, the quantity produced has increased 236 

 per cent. In other words, if the areas have 

 been correctly stated, the yield per acre has 

 risen from 253 lb in 1885 to 454 lb in 1906, upon 

 the average of all. Growth of indigenous or 

 hybrid kinds, high cultivation, and freer pluck- 

 ing do not alone account for this great 

 increase ; part of it is due to the number of 

 young, vigorous bushes with which old acres 

 have been leavened. Apart from this, at least 

 140,000 acres of the total area are not yet 

 much more than 12 years old, they add to 

 the aggregate productiveness, and under normal 

 conditions should ensure the maintenance or an 

 increase of the annual output. 



There is still room for development, if demand 

 for tea should justify it, and if labour were 

 obtainable. Nearly a million acres are held by 

 the Indian planters, taken up for tea, but not 

 yet cultivated ; the tenure is secure and the 

 terms are not onerous ; much of the land is 

 unsuitable for tea, but some is useful for by- 

 products, and enough remains for large exten- 

 sions when desirable, except in Darjeeling 

 where, it is said, the limit has nearly been 

 reached. No wide or sudden action in this 

 direction, however, is probable ; control has 

 become largely concentrated in the strong hands 

 of shrewd and cautious men, who should know 

 that the hurry of one year may take ten years 



of care to cure, and are not likely to forget the 

 lessons learned in bygone years, which teach 

 that development must be very slow in order to 

 be safe. Promoters from outside, smitten with 

 a mania for extension, will hardly find a footing 

 or a welcome. The spare lands are mainly dis- 

 tributed as follows :— 375,000 acres in Assam, 

 215,000 in Cachar, 160,000 in Sylhet, 157,000 in 

 the Dooars, 57,000 in Darjeeling, and 17,000 

 acres in Travancore. 



In this respect the position of Ceylon is some- 

 what different. It has been officially stated that 

 there are 461,000 acres of tea in the island, a 

 figure that needs to be reconciled with the care- 

 fully compiled statistics in " Ferguson's Direc- 

 tory/' which show that the total is only 390,000 

 acres. The same authority stated last year that 

 tea cultivation in Ceylon would probably even- 

 tually reach 400,G00 acres ; if that holds good, 

 there is not room for any great extension, while 

 the new factor introduced —namely, planting 

 rubber among tea, suggests the probability that 

 the output will gradually decrease. The rubber 

 trees, however, planted on 41,690 acres of tea in 

 Ceylon are still young and may not grow so 

 quickly as they do in new clearings, while the 

 increased value of tea leads every planter to 

 make the most of it. Helped early in the season 

 by weather that made the bushes flush well, and 

 by the stimulus to free plucking given by the 

 price of common tea, much more has been 

 gathered this year, to the great benefit of 

 growers. What the position may be when the 

 rubber trees reach maturity can only bo sur- 

 mised, but it is probable that less tea than now 

 will be produced, that more will then b e wanted 

 and that a healthy tea estate will be a valuable 

 possession. Bushes and soil are affected by age 

 and continuous cropping just as they are else- 

 where, but the majority of the gardens are not 

 yet old, and though much has been said about 

 " earthiness in high-grown tea," it should not 

 cause undue misgivings, because the deterio- 

 ration noticed may prove to be remediable and 

 transitory. 



The growers' chief concern, in India and 

 Ceylon alike, is not for their climate, plant, or 

 quality, but about the perennial difficulty of 

 obtaining sufficient coolie labour, the exceeding 

 dearnessof foodstuffs, and the high import duty 

 levied here. It is possible that scarcity in the 

 United Provinces caused by the present drought 

 may induce more labourers to move northward 

 and eastward, where work and food, homes, and 

 a fair wage await them, but so far no move- 

 ment is reported, while, as regards Ceylon, the 



