244 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [October i, 1887. 
which was ' cautiously sawed through' by Mr. 
John Keast Lord. By this gentleman it was de- 
clared to be a beetle of the second family of the 
Coleoptera Cerambycida, and to be closely allied 
to a somewhat common species known as the wasp- 
beetle (Olytus avietus), which usually undergoes 
its changes in old dry palings? Aided by the 
head of the Entomological Department of the 
British Museum, a specimen of the insect was at 
last found in the collection made by M. Ohevrolat 
somewhere in Southern India. Appended to this 
specimen was the name of Xylotrechns quadrupes. 
On a further examination of the tree, Mr. Lord 
very soon came to the conclusion that the insect 
did not necessarily cause the death of tree at all, 
as it lived on the dead matter of the inner or 
! eart wood of the stem, and only interfered with 
the circulation and sap-vessels of the tree when 
ii vorked up to the surface of the bark. And he 
finally was of opinion that ' the female beetle, 
guided by her instincts, selected trees, on, or in, 
or underneath of which she deposits her eggs, such 
trees being at the time, from some cause or other, not 
explicable, sickly and predisposed to early death.'" 
The conditions were that starch was turned to 
sugar by the unfavourable surroundings, and like 
the Helopeltis, like the child with his barley-sugar 
the borer preferred the sugar. "W."told us it 
was so with the fungus. Was he right? We must 
keep our trees juioy ; to obtain juiciness we must 
have lots of leaves and wood ; and in this clim- 
ate shade. 
No word of " Hemileia Vastatrix." Significant 
in 1871 ! A little talk of black bug. What about 
this latest of Ceylon plague " Green Bug " ? Oar 
author steps innocently ignorant of these two 
last plagues and begins to treat of " Cinchona." 
" Cinchona." — Saviour of Ceylon ! Thy buoyant 
quills floated Ceylon just clear of shipwreck and 
nothing more. The good ship ground the rocks 
and damaged her keel, but, thanks to cinchona, 
she has floated free in the golden waters of Tea. 
We pass the subject by as we would the body of 
the warrior who has just saved his country. He 
is gone, he has won. Let us drop a passiQg tear. 
Cinchona will never do in Mysore as a profitable 
speculation. Its growth is feeble and the market 
is dead. 
" Cardamoms." — I will first describe what it was 
my fortune to see on my arrival in Mysore. I 
stepped right into a cardamom plantation or forest 
ana worked there 2£ years. There are about three 
thousand to four thousand acres of grand virgin 
forest. Large areas of chena show where the 
ghastly borer swept away grand sheets of coffee. 
There the tiger prowls, there the sambur barks 
to the moon, or answers the far away howl of the 
jackal on the patana ridge above. The land is 
positively magnificent — " if it were in Ceylon." 
But those Ghaut forests like Morawak Korale, 
though bearing mighty trees do not possess great 
richness of soil. But still the land is fine. Three 
or tour vast valleys all roaded ; — and in that easy 
lie of land the roading is easy. The swamps have 
been all planted with cardamoms, the flats partly 
planted and partly sprung up ; the ridges draped 
and festooned with pepper as well as fairly covered 
with cardamoms. But you must not imagine even 
in the richest places that the cardamoms are like 
your lUngala groves. When I arrived there the 
old gentleman who was to be my boss took me 
and another new arrival round. This old gentle- 
man was the monarch of all he surveyed. He 
took me, the Ceylon chap, round his best fields 
and then spoke of breakfast much to the delight 
"I the griffin— the new comer, who had still his 
European stomach with all its cravings. The 
Ceylon chap (that 's me 1) was not satisfied. He 
made a terrible mistake. He had seen grand 
cardamoms in Rangala, Medamahanuwara, &c. 
He had come to the home of cardamoms. He 
wanted something that would beat those Bangala 
fellows. He asked the old boy if he could be per- 
mitted to see the estate — was it near— would they 
be passing by. The old one looked at the young 
one, and his eagle, tiger-slaying eye glittered, his 
cheeks flushed red against his snow-white whiskers. 
" This Ceylon fellow is trying his jokes so soon. 
We will have to sit on the Ceylon fellow." In 
withering sarcasm which missed its mark he told 
the Ceylon fellow he had seen the best to be seen, 
though he was sorry he could not come up to 
Ceylon standard apparently. I (the Ceylon fellow) 
was puzzled. Where were the expected columnar 
stools of noble rhizomes bending their graceful 
fronds lovingly over their scattered fruit-laden 
racemes ? Why we had come through jungle with 
occasional small young plants. I spoke : "But 
these are all young, are are they not ?" " A little 
younger than usual through damage from the 
heavy monsoon, but if you can find finer in Mysore, 
you will be clever." I walked behind my bosa, 
and felt I had put my foot in it. The young lad 
from home was longing to put his knife and fork 
into something. The forest was naturally divided 
into three great valleys. The centre one was the 
chief division. There was the boss's bungalow 
and the assistant's. The western one was deeper 
in the Ghauts, and though it had, like that other 
valley, a bungalow, clerihew, and waterwheel, yet it 
was not at that time occupied. The superintend- 
ents had to provide themselves with horses and 
got B15 a month allowance to keep them. R6 for 
horsekeeper, R2 for shoeing, R6 say for horse food. 
On coffee estates where grass is more scanty and 
wages higher, one gives R8 for horsekeeper, K4 for 
female grass-cutter, R2 for shoeing (sometimes 
Bl-8) and say R5 for food. A great deal of riding 
was done. The boss insisted that his men should 
have their horses always at hand. Crop time 
lasted from August to February, and a weary 
work it was to a man who had been 10 years at 
coffee. To leave a countrj where were all one's 
friends, to take an S. D.'s billet, to learn a new 
language, to learn new methods, to put up with 
being classed with 7 youngsters newly out from 
home— nay put under one with,3 months' experienced, 
to be at the level once again of favourite maistries 
spying to one's superior, and feel other influences 
at work as in days that one considered gone for 
ever ; — besides this to be advised by one newly 
out that it is wrong to give anything to a native 
with one's left hand or to salaam with one's left 
hand, to be tied to a gang of wandering coolies; 
throughout the live-long day in dark disnaal jungles 
following these hordes of coolies where never was 
a line marked out, where never was an ounce of 
manure, where all was' chaos. Where was there 
any brain-work, where any room for showing one's 
worth ? Sunk to the level of a " ganger," at the 
mercy of fortuitous circumstances, it only wanted 
the clank of the chain and the rattle of the bars 
to complete the idea of a prison. Monotonously 
stooping at occasional straggling clumps of 
cardamoms and pulling each particular capsule to 
see if any would come off. If one did, what abuse, 
what a torrent of hard words ! The gangs moved 
on through the dark forest, then came the " joolee- 
men" or searchers to see if any fruit was missed, 
then the maistries, then the sad Ceylon durai 
sickly thinking of Dimbula or Namunakulakanda. 
His unkempt horse (for how could the horsekeeper 
be out all day, cut grass, groom, boil food for 
horse and himself ?) kicking off the leeches and 
