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The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



water necessary for its manufacture. Machinery 

 can, of course, be provided. Mr. T. P. Masila- 

 many, of Jaffna, in a recent article in the 

 " Morning Leader " of this town, gave particu- 

 lars of the cost of a plant, the expense of work- 

 ing it, and of the estimated profits, which he 

 put down at 24 per cent, per annum. The 

 figures he gives have every appearance of 

 reliability, and it would thus seem that still 

 another may be added to the long list of tropical 

 and Ceylon industries. If Ceylon does not wish 

 again, as in the case of rubber, to remain 

 behindhand, she must hasten, for the idea is at 

 present being vigorously pushed in Indo-China, 

 by an Anglo-French Company, a representative 

 of which passed through Colombo a short time 

 ago. The work is being undertaken on a very 

 big scale, the very latest things in machinery 

 have been provided, and they are absolutely 

 confident of producing very large quantities of 

 paper within a very short time. The growth of 

 bamboos for the production of paper is certainly 

 worth the attention of Ceylon capitalists. 



PLANTING IN JAVA AND TRAVAN- 

 CORE. 



Tea- Rubber-Coconuts-Coffee. 

 Mr. C. E. Welldon has just returned from a 

 very interesting visit to Java, Sumatra, Johore 

 and the Malay States seeing much of Robusta 

 Coffee, Tea, Rubber and Coconuts. He was 

 greatly impressed with the tea in Java and con- 

 siders that Para rubber in suitable districts in 

 Java will be as good as any rubber in Sumatra or 

 the Straits. Fever on some of the best plantations 

 has been severe, but all possible provision is 

 made for the health of the Managers, employes 

 and coolies. He was struck with the yield of 

 coconuts in Sumatra and Java and expects more 

 land will be planted up with this product, 

 He stated that the profits on Robusta Coffee in 

 East Java are very large and that up to date 

 leaf-disease has not done harm and is not re- 

 ducing the crops so we may hear more of this 

 product during the next few years. 



TOBACCO IN CEYLON. 



A Warning to the Sanguine. 

 After the recent discussion at the Agricul- 

 tural Society we asked Mr. Vollar (so long 

 of the Doorabera Valley) to give us his opin- 

 ion and he kindly writes : — " I cau give you 

 very little information about tobacco as a pay- 

 ing industry in Ceylon. My experience was 

 the only one that ever made anything out of 

 it — if even by myself. The German (experts) who 

 bought the crop from me and looked after the 

 curing made a loss, I should say, of £10,000. — 

 I should say the Ceylon climate is unsuitable for 

 growing the wrapper leaf— it grows too rank, 

 and the strange thing is that seed taken from 

 plants of imported seed reverts — if not the first 

 year in the second — to the coarse indigenous 

 Ceylon tobacco. Hence nothing, I think, can 

 be made with the ' weed ' — I burn a lot of it 

 myself." 



RUBBER TAPPING. 



THE SHERIDAN-PATTERSON IMPROVED 

 PROCESS. 

 Warwick, Ambawella, Oct. 18th. 



Dear Sir, — A little over twelve months ago 

 you published a letter from me describing a new 

 system of tapping which I had started. Its 

 claim to originality was based on the system 

 allowing for the annual increment in girth of 

 the rubber tree and in substituting dividing the 

 tree into thirds, instead of Jinto fourths, as had 

 then been proposed in the Straits and by Pro- 

 fessor Hans Fitting, so that there might always 

 be a strip of untapped bark, or bark not less 

 than four years old to perform the functions 

 necessary for the nutriment of the tree. 



In dividing a young tree directly into fourths 

 or even into thirds, I found the strip of bark 

 available for tapping too small on a tree 18 in. in 

 girth at three feet from the ground, so 1 devised 

 the method which 1 attempted to describe in 

 my letter. Briefly the system was to take any 

 tree of 18 in. or even 16 in. in girth at 3 feet, 

 and to divide it into half, and then with two or 

 three cuts at a foot apart to tap out this section 

 which should take twelve months. At the com- 

 pletion of the 12 months the tree would have 

 increased in girth and be from 22 inches to 24 

 inches at 3 feet from the ground. I then pro- 

 posed taking another 2 or 3 cuts above the pre- 

 vious cuts and carrying on for another twelve 

 months, by which time the tree would have in- 

 creased a further four to six inches. My idea 

 then was to take 2-3rds of the untapped half, 

 and mark it out from the bottom with two 

 or three cuts as before, and tap it out, and 

 when this was completed go up above 

 these cuts with another two or three cuts 

 again. The tree would then have been tapped 

 four years and still have an untapped section. 

 The fourth year's tapping would then be over 

 this untapped section (which is the third of the 

 second half of the tree, of which 2-3rds is tapped 

 out) and over one-third of the originally tapped 

 half, the tree then being divided into l-3rd for 

 evermore. 



The practical adaptation of this system has 

 shown that it works out well, but it is found 

 better to only put two cuts on the first half, then 

 when this is tapped out to divide the other half 

 of the tree into 2-3rds and put two or three cuts 

 on this 2-3rds section giving another year's work. 

 When this is completed, say in twelve months' 

 time, if the renewed bark of the first year's 

 tapping is sufficiently good, the l-3rd of the 

 second half that is intact, and l-3rd of the 

 first year's section, can be taken straight away 

 and the tree is divided into thirds. But if, 

 as is most probable, the renewal of the first 

 section tapped is not considered sufficiently 

 recovered, then put on two or three cuts above 

 the second year's tapping and carry on for 

 another twelve months by when the first 

 section tapped will be good enough in almost 

 all cases to have l-3rd of its area taken 

 in, and the 2-3rds left will be sufficiently 

 renewed to perform all the necessary functions 

 of the bark, which necessity is being so en- 

 tirely ignored by many systems of tapping 



