342 
THP TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [November k, 1889. 
state in consequence of age and the disease there is 
nothing better than a dense growth of castor ou\ 
say 12 ft. x 12 ft. At the same time should be planted 
more substantial and lasting trees ; when these latter 
have grown the castors can easily be rooted out, 
Generally speaking, there is many a good year in 
store for our district ; and let men say what they 
will (alarmists exist in every community) the Nilgiris 
will remain to the front in the coffee-planting world. 
Nilgiris, 30th Sept. Lihp. 
—Madras Mail 
THE COFFEE PLANTER OF TO-DAY 
IN SOUTHERN INDIA. 
The day has long gone past when a planter may hope 
to eat his bread simply in the sweat of his brow. 
Thorns and thistles will the earth bring forth, lantana 
and scrub, if besides his brow his brain is not well sweat 
ed. The coffee-tree has by high cultivation now 
reached a position very nearly analogous to that in 
which the nineteenth century man stands to his 
ancestor of the ninth century. As its powers of pro- 
duction are increased, we may feel quite sure that dis- 
eases, before latent, will be developed, and that it will 
fall an easy prey to its many insect enemies, if con 
stant and unremitting care is not devoted to it, and all 
the resources that science, deep thought and mani 
fold experiments can afford, are not brought to bear on 
it. To attempt to cultivate coffee by any hard and 
fast rules except in the most general way, is to try 
and lay down a mosaic with foot-rule and square, or to 
woo and win a maiden according to a two-penny 
ha'penny " etiquette of courtship." 
Ther e is no doubt that the position of the planter is 
great'y improved as compared with what it was in the 
memory of many. Roads there are everywhere, and 
though at the end of the monsoon they may be 
nothing but ruts and holes, yet they are certainly 
better than mountain Bracks and the beds of torrents 
up which many a planter has before now had to climb 
to reach his estate. The mud-and wattle hut has 
disappeared, and in its place are substantial bungalows 
of brick or rammed-earth or else built of planks of 
different timber, tastefully fitted together and polished. 
Inside, all is neat, simple and homely ; there is no room 
for ostentation even if it were desired, but there is 
room, and yet never room enough, for comfort and 
kindly hospitality. Outside, a garden blooms with many 
a sub-tropical flower, and the air is sweet with roses 
and violets, and the memories they recall of the gardens 
of England ; a small well-kept lawn there is sure to be, 
and possibly a fountain or a tiny miniature lake : the 
whole evidently the pride of its mistress, or the hobby 
of its master, if he be a bachelor. Few districts have 
not felt the refinements of married life, and there is a 
growing disposition for men to take unto themselves 
wives and to plant among their coffee trees their Lares 
and Penates. 
To an outsider, coffee planting often seems simplicity 
itself. It is simple : as simple as for a professional 
jockey to win a race by half a length without moving 
hand or foot. The two qualities essential for a planter 
are infinite patience and UDfailing hope, no mean 
virtues. His troubles are usually trivial, as small as 
the spears of Lilliput, but as numerous. In each year 
there comes a crisis to all but the very fortunate, a 
time of looking towards the sea and seeing nothing, of 
watching a little cloud arising like a man's hand and 
passing away, of beholding the heaven black with 
clouds and wind and hearing the roar of the rain as it 
tails a mile away but not on his plantation, of gazing 
at the mocking splendour of the rainbow as the shower 
dies away and the sun shines again. At length the rain 
falls, but too late, so that where he expected his trees 
to hear forty-fold, they only bi'ar ten-fold. All that is 
|i f for him to do is to plod steadily through another 
y>*r »nd hope for better luck next time. His chief 
failings are grumbling, and a too ready suspicion of 
those with whom he stands in a business relation, It is 
c uiiLUS that these failings appear to be inherent in 
hoso who directly depend on nature for their living 
The former can be readily understood, but the latter 
not so easily, when it is remembered that along with 
it usually goes great hospitality, a marked sense of 
justice, and that charity which is slow to think evil of 
any man- A planter is an artist in the highest sense of 
the word. "With jungle desolation and fever-laden for- 
est for marble block, with axe for chisel, and health and 
wealth for mallet, his 6tudio the vault of heaven, bright 
with the sunshine of day, or filled with the starlit silence 
of night, broken only by the mournful moan of an owl or 
the short sharp bell of a sambhur, does he, a second 
Pygmalion, carve forth another statue which shall 
presently throb with the pulses of life and be rich in 
the beauty of vivid existence. Much has been spoilt, 
we will admit, and there are many tracts of abandoned 
coffee estates which appear great disfigurements to 
the eye of the enthusiast forester. Not that the work 
has been done wantonly or idly. These abandoned 
estates are the lessons of experience and he who fails 
wrestling with nature is not disgraced. In coffee it is 
as in almost everything else the only thing that really 
3 ucceeds is success. Nor must it be overlooked that 
to bring an acre of coffee into bearing — and few if any 
estates are abanboned till long after this — means R200 
for the ryots of India. If there is any truth in that 
opinion that he who can make two ears of corn or two 
blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where 
only one grew before, deserves well of mankind, and 
does essential service to his country; surely a planter 
will rank high as a benefactor and a patriot. " Out of 
the eater came forth meat," out of the deadly jungle 
has come forth life and civilisation. Every acre under 
coffee represents at this day, to take a very low average, 
not only food and support for one man, but also an 
annual saviDg of E20, which he can spend in his own 
land as be best pleases. Look at Mysore I scarce a 
decade has passed since her treasury was depleted, her 
people impoverished, their cattle dead and their seed- 
corn eaten ; now she is rich and prosperous, and her 
people thriving. Good administration mav do much, 
but the ablest administrator is as unable as the Israelite 
slave to make bricks without straw. From the sholas 
of the Nelliampthies and from the forests of the 
Pulneys, from the hollows of the Shevaroys 
and from the hillsides of Peermade, from the slopes 
of the Nilgiris and from the uplands of the Wynaad, 
from the groves of Ooorg and from the " 6-arneys " of 
Mysore, there is flowing, and has been for many a year 
past, into the neighbouring countries a perennial stream 
of silver, rich as Pactolus. Unfortunately it is not 
with this Eastern stream of fable that Government is 
apt to confound the Ooffee planter but rather with the 
Eastern stream of every-day life which, it is well 
known, to do most good must be often dammed. — 
Madras Times. 
TOBACCO AND COTTON IN DTJMBARA. 
A correspondent writes : — We have almost got 
in all our tobacco crop, about 140 acres, 
a very fair crop indeed, and it is turning out 
very well in the curing. We are curing lor seven 
other estates and have altogether over 40 tons of to- 
bacco in store! We planted 90 acres of cotton (in one 
day) in our tobacco fields : it is looking splendid. I 
shall pessibly be able to tell you more about cotton 
later on, i.e. if it pays us; but you see we were 
able to work very cheaply in having our lines of 
tobacco to work by and all the land perfectly clear 
and ready dug for the last crop of tobacco. We 
planted the 90 acres 3ft. x 4ft., three seeds in a 
hole, made with a piece of stick with 148 coolies 
there was no lining or digging to be done. The 
field of cotton is very regular, one can almost see 
the plants grow. We have a small cotton clearing 
at Wattegama; that also is tobacco land replanted 
with cotton — we soak the seed over night, plant 
the following morning about 1 inch deep and in two 
to three days after the seed is above ground. Seed 
from Messrs. Darley, Butler * Co. 
