September i, 1887.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 
throws up 5, 6, or 7 shoots, with 5, 6 or 7 ears of 
corn — all our plough did was to make the ears of corn 
nearly twice as big, thus turning a 50 or 60-fold 
crop into 108 or 115-fold. 
The great thing to remember is the enormosu 
multiplication of shoots thrown up hy one grain or seed 
when it is planted out, whereas when it is sown 
broadcast, one seed produces usually one, and at most 
two shoots and ears. 
Every native knows this— but they say " we can ' 
plant out large tracts of land because of the labour," 
too many of them, however, neglect planting out 
thoir little plots for the same reason. 
Take the case of the ordinary cottager with his 
\ acre lot, or .4 acre lot from which he gstsa few bushels 
only because he sows it broadcast, and thus lives in 
semi-starvation. With a little bit of trouble, without 
any " new fangled apparatus," and without any 
manure, he could get from this plot of land 
at least five or six times what he now gets, while if he 
would use his house sweepings etc. as manure, 
and cultivate on improved principles, I can hardly 
say where the yield would stop. 
The more I see of planting out paddy the more I 
am astonished at the possibilities of yield. As I said 
before, I have had it up to 360-fold. But with 
broadcast sowing I call 25-fold good, even when 
my ploughs are properly used. — I am, sir, yours 
very faithfully, H. W. Greek. 
♦ 
FAREWELL TO COFFEE. 
The Demon Disease Killing it. 
An Old and Expfrienced Coffee Planter from 
Ceylon Tells the Reason for TnE High Price and 
Scarcity of Your Breakfast Drink. 
Seldom has the price of a product in use for general 
consumption advanced with greater rapidity than 
has that of coffee within the last twelve months, 
and the bean is now selling about 135 percent higher 
than it did this time last year. It is the general 
opinion among the uninitiated that this is owing to 
a " corner " in the coffee market and that the high 
price is only temporary, to fall again when those who 
are running the corner have made all they can out 
of the deal. But this is far from being the real state 
of the case. True, there may be a corner, but at the 
same time it is very unlikely that the price of coffee 
will over again be as low as it has been. 
The real facts are that the high price snow ruling are 
not due to a corner, but to the fact that the supply of 
coffee throughout the coffee growing countries has 
been getting shorter and shorter every year, and the 
present outlook is that it will continue to decrease 
until coffee becomes a luxury only within the reach 
of the wealthy. Tho cause of the shortness of the 
crop is not, as stated in an article the other day, 
the effects of rust and Hies on the plantations, but it 
is owing to the ravages of the hemileia-vastatrix, or 
coffee-leaf disease, a disease that is now absolutely 
rampant over every coffee-producing country in the 
world. 
Dealers and speculators in Europe and America ap- 
pear to bo only now waking up to the fact that this 
disease is universal,* and that it has come to stay. The 
" boom " in coffee some years ago was so great that 
numbers of new plantations were opened and tbc ad- 
ditional supply obtained trom this source, when they 
began to yield, nominally kept up the crops, hut they 
soon died out, and nearly nil the old plantations have 
for years not yielded one-fifth, aud in some cases not 
one-tenth, of their original average. Then dealers 
hugged themselves with the belief that tho hemileia 
would depart nnd the coffee tree recover from the dis- 
ease in the same way as it had done when attacked 
with " black-bug " and "rust," but this is a very 
different matter and shows not tho slightest signs of 
abatement. 
The writer was a practical coffee planter in Ceylon 
when this dread disease lir^t made its appearance 
no ono knew from where. At that time coffee was 
• Wo have no distinct evidence that /tanili iu vj.iUiti i.r 
bus reached tho Western Hemisphere.— Ed. 
" booming," and would net $25 per 100 pounds in 
London, sometimes more. A fair average crop on a 
second-rate plantation would run about 500 2>ounds to 
an acre, the estates or plantations varying from 150 
acres up to 800 and 1,000 acres. .Sometimes as much 
as 1,000 pounds per acre would be obtained from an 
estate. This, too, without the aid of fertilizers ; in fact, 
the soil in Ceylon was so rich that until this disease 
appeared, no fertilizers were required.* But one day a 
planter noticed on the leaves of his coffee trees a small 
black spot surrounded with a yellowish fungus thac came 
off like dust. On some leaves it was unnoticeable until 
they were held up against the sun, and then the black 
spot was distinctly visible. He at first took no notice 
of it until he found that all his trees were similarly 
affected and that the leaves were beginning to turn 
* yellow and drop off. The coolies, when they went into 
the coffee, would come out with their black, naked 
bodies stained as if with yellow ochre. The attention 
of his brother planters was called to this phenomenon, 
and it was then found that nearly every plantation in 
the island was similarly affected. 
At Peradenyia, near Kandy, the Government has a 
botanical garden, perhaps the finest and most complete 
in the world, and the superintendent, the late Dr. 
Thwaites, a botanist of world-wide renown, gave his 
whole attention to this new disease, bestowing on it tho 
name of hemileia-vastatrix. In his opinion the disease 
would die out in the same way as previous plagues 
had.t but as month after month passed and the trees 
began to look sicklier and sicklier tho planters were 
alarmed. Crops began to drop from 500 pounds an 
acre to 200, and then to as low even as 100, and in 
some estates to nothing at all. Once flourishing estates 
were completely snuffed out and abandoned. This, too, 
in spite of the greatest care and a high expenditure in 
artificial manures. Some planters would spend as high 
as $75 an acre in fertilizers and get a crop that did not 
bring them a return of $25 an acre. 
At this time, also, Brazil was comparatively untouched 
by the disease and was pouring coffee by the ton into the 
European markets. The Ceylon planters tried every- 
thing, but matters got worse every day. Every 
known agricultural chemist in Europe was commun- 
icated with and experts brought from Europe at 
an expense of thousands of dollars, but the money 
might just as well have been thrown in the ditch. 
There was not a fertilizer in the market, no matter 
how high-priced it might be, but was tried, and the 
only one that had any effect, and that was bu,t 
slight, was sulphur blown upon the leaves. The dis- 
ease was a peculiar one. Wood would grow plenti- 
fully upon the tree and it would be covered with 
leaves that to all appearance were perfectly healthy. 
Then the blossom would come and " set" beautifully, 
the branches being well laden with berries sufficient 
to yield a crop of from five to six hundred pounds. 
But a change would soon come over the spirit of 
the planter's dream of wealth. Before the berries 
were half-formed the fatal spot on the leaves would 
appear, then the leaves and the half-formed berries 
would drop off, and what had been a splendidly wooded 
estate became in a month or two a lot of bare sticks, 
with scarcely sufficient crop on them to pay the 
superintendent's salary. 
The drop in values of estates was enormous. As an in- 
stance, the writer was interested in an estate for which, 
just after the leaf disease appeared and before it l-e:;:ui 
to frighten people, $250,000 cash, was paid. The es- 
tate rose in value, and about six months aftprthe pur- 
chase was mortgaged to a Scotch land company for 
$150,000. Eighteen months afterward the estate was 
valued at $100,000, or $50,000 less than it was mort- 
gaged for. It would have taken the purse of Fortuu- 
atus to stand such losses as that and at the same time 
keep up the heavy working expenses of the plantation, 
so the cousequeuce was that every planter with any- 
thing to lose lost it. An attempt was made Wj stem 
* Most incorrect. Manure was very largely used.— 
En. , . . 
1 Incorrect. Thwaites took at once the gravest vh w, 
and ho was pooh-poohed by the most txpirioiitid 
planters. — El'. 
