September i, 1887.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 153 
PLANTING IN CEYLON IN 1847-1800. 
Fiton a Lecture iit A. M. Ferguson, c.m.g. 
In a previous lecture delivered in this place* a 
year ago, I gave a brief glauce at events occurring 
and persons prominent in the annals of Ceylon dur- 
ing tuo score of years between 1837 and the end 
of 1810. The retrospect, indeed, extended to the 
close, in April 1847, of the administration of Lieut. - 
General Sir Colin Campbell, a peninsular veteran, 
the last of the regularly appointed rulers of Ceylon, 
in whoso person civil functions and military com- 
mand woro combined. In the period of this Gov- 
ernor's rule, during the five years commencing with 
April 1811, the Coffee planting enterprize, assisted 
with British capital and conducted by British energy 
and enterprize, (supplies of Tamil labour from 
Southern India becoming gradually available, made 
steady progress) ; the revenue of the Island, as has 
ever been the case, rising in proportion to the 
capital spent in planting operations, whether those 
engaged in such operations profited or the reverse. 
Judged merely by the revenual test, so prosperous 
did the Colony seem, that the Colonial and Home 
authorities felt justified in adding considerably to 
the numbers and emoluments of the civil establish- 
ments ; so leaving, as has repeatedly happened, a 
legacy of embarassment and enforced reduction to their 
successors. While all appeared prosperous, a terrible 
storm of fiuancial trouble in Europe, with its reflex 
action on Ceylon, was impending, which burst be- 
tween 1845 and 1817, and the depressing and dis- 
couraging effects of which continued to bo felt all 
along the years extending to 1850. Small compar- 
atively as was the export of Coffee from Ceylon 
(the figures for 1816 being only 17-1,000 cwt.), 
yet consumption of the fragrant berry was then so 
limited, that, added to the stoppage of supplies of 
capital from Europe, came the fall in prices in the 
consuming markets, which ever follows in the wake 
of overproduction at the sources of supply. To say 
that crops, oven with returns of 5 to 10 cwt. and 
more per acre, did not pay the cost of cultivation, 
would be to give but a faint idoa of the disastrous 
crisis of 18 15 to 184Q. Suffice it to state that parch- 
ment coffee, which we have seen readily selling in 
the local market at R12 per bushel, was then parted 
with at B3, while at Kaudy a bushel of rice and a 
cwt. of coffee were selling for an equal sum of money. 
As if to put the finishing stroke to the. fate of the 
onco promising Ceylon coffee enterprize, the scale- 
insect or coccus, known popularly as black bug, 
which years previously, had sp»ead to portions of 
the coffee plantations from the indigenous jungle, 
now bocamo rapidly and virulently pre dent, tho 
black fungus, which ever accompanies the really 
brown insect, giving a funereal aspect to the once 
glossy-green vegetation, and wholo plantations, on 
which blossom and fruit were no longer able to show 
themselves, seemed to tho depressed onlooker in 
mourning for a dead industry. The death of the 
enterprize was indeed confidently anticipated in 1 s 17 , 
from tho combined attacks of black bug and black 
grub, and there can be no doubt that the mode in 
which tho coffee plant then resisted the pestiferous 
influences of such formidable onemics, finally triumph- 
ing over them, omorging into a new life of vigour, 
umbragoousnosx, bright blossom and profitable fruit 
crops tended greatly to lull even tho most experienced 
and sagacious planters into security, when a gener- 
ation afterwards, with far less warning and with 
far more fatal effect] hemileia vastatrix escaped from 
the gloomy recesses of its junglo home to perplex 
scientists and spread ruin amongst thousands de- 
pendent on tho enterprize so mystoriously and so 
destructively affected. With white grubs, tho off- 
spring of cockchafer beetles, at tho roots of tho 
trees which were simultaneously divested |of their 
foliage by the fungus foe, it might well be said of the 
coffoo plant from 18(1!) onwards, that its candle of 
life was being consumed at both ouds ; and yet it 
was while wholo fields of coffeo in Ceylon woro tinted 
oraugo by the sporea of the fata l fmigus, that estates 
♦ Baptist Ohuro^i, Cinnamon Oar lons.T'olouibJ! 
changed hands at fabulous prices, and that merchants, 
brokers and bankers competed with each other in 
pressing accomodation on planters, deemed lucky and 
to be envied as the possessors of coffee property and 
who pooh-poohed the new enemy as an evanescent 
evil, seeing that it had not yet materially lessened 
crops which were selling in London at prices up to 
l'20s. per cwt. Scientists tell us, and we are prob- 
ably bound to accept their dicta, that such visitations 
as bug and grub and fungus in coffee, with kelopeltis 
and red spider on tea, are retributive and corrective 
in their nature, sent as warnings against disturbing 
a so-called " balance of nature," whereby many and 
varied species of vegetation grow over the same area, 
instead of vast expanses of a single product being 
presented, as is so frequently the case when the clear- 
ing and cultivating agency of man appears on the 
scene. The fate of coffee growers in the Eastern 
world, following on the misfortunes of the cultiv- 
ators of vines, wheat and potatoes in Europe and 
other parts of the world, seems to establish the 
principle alluded to, although doubtless other more 
or less obscure laws of soil and atmosphere may 
have been unconsciously violated. Then again it 
may be amongst the beneficent designs of the Ruler 
of nature, and "natural laws" so-called, that the 
misfortunes of the few should conduce the great- 
est good of the greatest number, an end which 
certainly has been largely attained by the impetus 
which the failure of coffee in Ceylon gave to the 
cultivation of the plauts which yield the most effect- 
ive relief to suffering humanity, when afflicted by 
malarious fevers (the most common and most formid- 
able diseases of the world, probably) or when de- 
pressed by debility, the consequence of other affec- 
tions. Ceylon planters, who when their Old King 
became moribund and got into " the sere and yellow 
leaf " showed so much enterprize, energy and I may 
add, success, in the cultivation of the febrifuge- 
yielding cinchonas in a scene so far away from the 
Andean homo of those interesting plants, may, in 
the absence, during late years, of appreciable profits 
from this source, derive what consolation they can 
from the reflection that the benefits they have con- 
ferred on the world, by cheapening and so render- 
ing generally and easily accessible a medicine the 
moH valuable in its properties and the most certain 
in its effects of all the substances included in the 
pharmacopoeia, are co-extensive with humanity itself. 
As I have been led to anticipate so far, I may be 
permitted to advert to auother new product which 
had not been seriously and decisively considered as 
a probable staple product of the island in the period 
I am reviewing, but which is as intimately connected 
with the decadence of coffee as effect is with cause. 
I refer, of course, to our new staple tea, which as 
a medicine is only inferior to quinine. I have proof 
of this in the fact stated to me by a lady doctor 
from India, that, failing supplies of cheap quinine, 
she in her own practice substituted, and with perfect 
success, cheap tea as a remedy for tho severe mal- 
arial fevers, which annually decimate the poor natives 
in the North-west of India. But tea has the grand 
advantage over quinine of being not merely a med- 
icine, but a nutritious and innocently stimulative 
article of food, popular already with a considerable 
portion of tho human raco and likely, ultimately, 
very largely to supplant alcoholic stimulants and 
narcotics. Good tea has prophylactic as well as 
medicinal and nutritious virtues, and when tho time 
comes, as como it probably will, when tho vast 
majority of tho human race will regularly use tea 
as an article of diet, the cases in which quinine 
and othor febrifuges or tonics may bo " indicated, " 
will becomo few and far between. Without disparag- 
ing coffee or chocolate it is certain that tea is 
one of the most easily prepared and ono of tho 
most gratoful of the non alcoholic stimulauts, and 
tho most likely therefore oro long from its univers- 
ality of uso to doservc the opithet " sublime," which 
Byron applied to a narcotic weed tho mo of which 
would, in tho opinion of some of us. bo " inoro 
honored in tho broach thin the observance." Re- 
tloctious such as these may help to roa-uuro and 
cheer Coylor tea planters, u tho phautoiu of " ovoi - 
