July i, 1889.I THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
29 
["The leaftet, which gives the very pith of the 
practical information required by the ordinary 
cultivator, will be carefully reprinted in our next 
issue of the Tropical Agriculturist,— iEd, ,] 
CHEAP TEA AND TRANSPORT. 
Dear Sir, — I do not know what is meant when 
you say " We know leaf has been bought at 8c per 
lb., but that was under ' exceptional circumstances.' " 
I know an estate that is buying ordinary good 
leaf — not fine plucked — at that rate. 
The cart-hire to Colombo from Haputale estates 
to Fort is a trifle over 1^ cent per lb. net of tea. 
Just as good as Dikoya with a railway, and it 
may be better. It may, I fear, be better than with a 
railway to Haputale. 
Just received way-bill of tea from new Maturata, 
and the rate per lb. net of tea is positively more 
than from Haputale, although the Maturata tea comes 
by train from Kandy !— Yours, AGENT. 
[But, if the cartmen had no railway competition, 
how flould t the rates be ? — Ed.] 
"THE TERRORS OF THE TEA POT:" 
"BIT A BEER DRINKER." 
May 22nd, 1889. 
Sir,— The article you take over from the St. James's 
Budget in your Supplement of May 18th although 
racy, humourous and somewhat sensational, is one of 
that kind inserted for the amusement of London 
Olubs, and more for the way iu which it is written 
than for the author's very misapplied thesis. The 
Chinese continue to be today, what they always 
were, the most industrious people under the sun. So 
much so that nations of European extraction like the 
United States and our British dependencies are so 
afraid of their competition, that they are obliged to 
legislate against the introduction of Chinese labour. 
As to their inventiveness, skill and fertility of re- 
source in certain art work it is simply proverbial. 
" That they have no care for life, no fear of death, 
no considerations for human suffering " has nothing 
to do with tea drinking ; it is the result of the 
ruin brought about by lulse theological teaching, 
idolatry and the survival of the effect of the bru- 
tality of all autocratic Government, though the 
darkness of past ages, and in the light of this. 
The Chinese knew for instance for hundreds of years 
before we did, in their exquisite pottery, called china, 
how to make it from kaolin, and that glass was made 
from the ashes of the fern. Taey were civilized in 
degree as it is termed, when Europeans, as represented 
by Goths and Vandals were savages, and today they still 
are in spite of the researches of chemists ahead or 
by no means retrograde in this direction, many of 
their ingenious processes being still secret. 
But granting freely the deterioration physically of 
the human race, and that most of this is produced by 
its follies and excesses, how much is not due to beer 
drinking, to opium smoking, tobacco smoking, chew- 
ing and spitting, and the extensive use of narcotics, 
the effect of which is so marked ? The spitting alone 
in chief cities of the United States, even in Boston, 
"the hub of the universe" and "the city of culture," 
is so constant that ladies have to hold up their dresses 
to avoid making pavement-cleansing cloths of them 
in wiping up the ineas made by these filthy brutes, whose 
manners know no more excuse than to say " Wal 
stranger, I guess T cleared jer," when they miss spit- 
ting on passers themselves. 
These are the over-active, nerve-destroying, body- 
destroying, and race-denerating agents — not tea. Men 
like " a beer drinker " are so fond still like the Pharisee 
of saying they are not what other people are, but for- 
getting they are tarred with the same brush. If the 
Chinese are deteriorating as a race, a is due to the 
excessive use of opium more than to tea, which they 
have used and known just as long and just as extensively. 
The free use of theso narcotics has been proved, not 
only to injure the nerves and poison the system, but 
absolutely to dwarf the human race. Suppression of 
their use is sometimes attempted by legislation, but in 
vain. I remember a special instance at the Cape of 
Good Hope, where ' dagga " smoking among the 
natives was suppressed or an attempt made to suppress 
it bylaw on account of its pernicious effect, but with 
little success. This is a powerful poisonous narcotic 
which with about two draws from a " dagga " hole 
made in the ground from which the natives inflate 
their lungs will induce sleep and torpidity for hours. 
Living on roots, wild nuts, unwholesome animal food 
and " dagga" smoking bas reduced the size of the 
aborigines in some parts of South and Centra! Africa 
among certain tribes to dwarfs, and by breeding in 
and in, the dwarf has continued to dwarf until a race 
of pigmies is found, descended however from the 
original sons of Ham of the normal size. In mind 
and body alike depraved and debased until 
unable lit times to do more than sit on their 
haunches looking like idiots, to which the Darwins 
and modern infidels point in their folly, and call 
them " primeval man "I It is humau degradation 
that is the true thesis and not " development " the 
true hypothesis. 
But to place all this to the account of tea which 
when properly infused is not only harmless but 
refreshing, is certainly rather too bad. Apropos of 
it, I had a travelled friend, who, seeing me well 
milking aud creaming my tea when passing round 
after dinner, said : " Ah I that is the way to get 
indigestion ; you should do as I do, following the 
example of the Chinese and Russians, they take 
their tea without milk," " Are you aware," he con- 
tinued, " that the tannin in the tea unites with 
the milk and the cream turns it into leather?'' 
Just what we want, thought I, and there is something 
in this worth observing. Tea with milk in it, I 
believe, has the effect of absolutely neutralizing if 
not destroying the action of the tannin. 
So Great Britain, the land of milk, has learned, after 
all, how beat to use tea without abusing it. — Tours 
truly, A MODERATE TEA DKINKER. 
TEA PROSPECTS. 
Sir, — The prospects of tea will give us all a 
shake : but will result in good. Planters will be 
forced to make better tea. I know that is my 
oase. Have you heard of any syndioate or com- 
bination of China tea merchants to meet present 
heavy losses in order to secure future profits by 
ruining the present generation of British tea- 
growers ? Yet what short of that could induce 
China buyers to ship home large supplies in 
face of the existing depression. Those individual 
firms will not face the certain loss . have they not 
suffered much already ? The present deadlock 
may get even worse, but cannot last ? — Yours 
truly, ANOTHER PROPRIETOR. 
BLACK BUG ON CEYLON COFFEE OF 
RECENT YEARS. 
Ramboda, 22nd May 1889. 
Dear Sir, — It is with the greatest diffidence that 
I venture to question a statement in the Observer; 
but surely, in your impression of 18th instant, 
when in a note you write: "Black bug ceased to affect 
seriously Ceylon coffee nearly 35 years ago," you, 
were unaware of this pest on Upper Ramboda estates 
within the last 10 years, before coffee was cut out. 
In Udapu sellawa also in 1877 we used the means 
of thatching the roots you mention, but the 
disease there was nothing oompared to what I 
have seen in Ramboda. I can mention an estate 
now even in Sabaragamuwa where the ooffee u 
