( 339 ) 



Copy of a Letter from George Sulivan Marten, Efq* 



Enston, Oxfordshire, July 30, 1800, 



Sir, 



UNDERSTANDING there exifts fome doubt how far your 

 vegetable plafter anfwers in hot climates, I cannot in juftice 

 hefitate to inform you, that it was in conftant and fuccefsful 

 ufe not only in my own garden in the diftricl: of Trinfivelly, 

 four hundred miles South of Madras, but alfo in the Com- 

 pany's Cinnamon Plantation which I had the pleafure of 

 forming there, and where, from the method of cultivating 

 that fpice, the trees are always cut down to (tumps. Your 

 plafter at thefe times was always applied, which flopped the 

 bleeding, and haftened out the (hoots (from whence the belli 

 Cinnamon is taken) much quicker than the former mode (and 

 which is ftill praftifed in Ceylon I believe) of heaping the 

 earth over them. Nor was my experience confined ; for, 

 when I quitted India in October 1798, I left one hundred 

 and fifty thoufand trees and plants in the Trinfivelly Planta- 

 tions, all of which I had planted from the feed of two trees 

 brought from the Ifland of Ceylon by Mrs. Light, which are 

 yet nourifhing, I dare fay, in the Commercial Refident's 

 garden. 



I likewife applied your plafter with equal fuccefs to the 

 fruit-trees of the country. But to an old Pumbilmos, or 

 Shaddock tree, which was almoft throughout decayed, and 



X x 2 which 



