Edible Products. 



282 



[May 1907. 



could not have possibly been tried on a lesser extent, as it would have been 

 impossible to separately cure the tobacco so grown, Ultimately, however, at 

 the instance of the Secretary, Ceylon Agricultural Society, Messrs. Freudenberg & 

 Co, consented to supply me with a quantity sufficient for half an acre free of cost, 

 on condition that another half an acre was left unmanured, the results compared, 

 and a report made to the Society on the experiment- I, however, took the oppor 

 tunity of comparing the merits of cattle manure as well, and this paper embodies the 

 result of the experiment. 



While negotiations for the manure were going on, I persuaded a tobacco 

 cultivator, who had manured his land according to the system previously referred 

 to, namely, tethering cattle, to turn up the soil of another acre adjoining his land, so 

 that we had three plots contiguous to each other, and each about half an acre in extent^ 

 prepared for the purposes of the experiment ; on one of which cattle manure was 

 used, the other was left unmanured, and the third was reserved for artificial 

 manure. Although the transplanting from the nursery, which in other years 

 used to take place in April, was delayed till the 15th of May in 1906 on 

 account of the unprecedented drought, the manure from Messrs. Freudenberg 

 & Co. did not arrive till the plants had been set in. I received the manure on the 

 19th June, by which time the plants had already taken root but the manure could 

 not have been applied at once, as the ground was hard from want of rain, and as I did 

 not wish to disturb the soil round the plants at the time. In the meantime the 

 plants on the portion manured with cattle manure had outgrown the plants on the 

 other two plots, although the effect of the drought was clearly visible on 

 them all. On the 5th July, however, there was a shower of rain sufficient to 

 soak through the soil some inches, and on the 6th July the manure was ap- 

 plied by sprinkling about 2 ounces of it round each plant an inch away from 

 the root, and mixing it with the soil and covering it up with fresh soil. The manure 

 was applied in this way to about 3,000 plants covering an extent of exactly half an 

 acre. The effect in a few days was magical as the plants helped by a shower of rain 

 soon afterwards began to grow steadily, and by the first week of August they were 

 of the same heiarht as those on the portion manured with cattle manure. 

 But, unfortunately, about the third week of July, most of the plants on 

 this plot as well as on the manured portion were attacked by the stem borer 

 and although immediate steps were taken to eradicate the pest, a large number of 

 plants either died or became quite useless. The man on whose plantation the experi- 

 ment was tried was quite against the total destruction of the plants attacked and 

 adopted a new measure to fight agaiiiLt the pest. He cut the plants across just below 

 the point attacked by the stem borer, and allowed a fresh shoot or sucker to grow 

 from the stump which, though not half as vigorous as the mother plant, would have 

 been found to be of some value. The stem borer did not, however, attack the 

 portion fertilized with cattle manure, and I attribute it not to the superiority of the 

 cattle manure, but to the difference of height and growth of the plants, 

 as the plants on the cattle manured portion had outgrown the height at 

 which the pest usually manifests itself. The effect of the pest was such that the 

 plantation was shorter by about 2,000 plants. 



Just before the plants were topped and some time after while the leaves were 

 maturing, there was sufficient opportunity to compare the height and girth of the 

 plants, the length and size of the leaves, and the average number of leaves to 

 a plant on the different plots. While the plants on the two manured plots were 

 almost of the same height and girth and the leaves broader and longer, the 

 plants on the unmanured plot were much shorter and thinner and the leaves 

 much smaller. In short, the superiority of the plants on the manured plots 

 over those on the unmanured was so apparent that no minute comparison was at 



