42b 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [December i, 1887 
but the writer is convinced that for ten years past 
it has been pretty regular. In the past 35 years 
the price has trebled. About 1840 ivory cost $1 
a pound; now it costs 1t3. Large tusks, weighing 
150 lb. to 190 lb., are much rarer than they were 
ton years since, and the number of smaller tusks 
has greatly increased, Zanzibar ivory stands higher 
in. the market than that from Abyssinia, Egypt, 
or the West Coast. The export from Mozambique 
and the north and south Somali coasts is com- 
paratively small. The best ivory is used for the 
manufacture of billiard balls ; the inferior sorts 
are converted into knife-handles, ornaments, &c. 
— London Times. 
— + 
TEA IN NATAL. 
To Mr. H. K. Eutherford we are indebted for the 
following notice of tea in Natal : — 
Tea. in Natal. 
The followirg extract from a letter received by Mr. 
Eutherford from Mr. J. L. Hulett of Kearsney tea 
estate, Natal, will no doubt prove interesting to Ceylon 
tea growers. 
" Tea Seed. — The jat which we are growing is ex- 
ceedingly good and was obtained from Assam in 1878. 
Several Indian planters have stated that we could not 
have got a better class of Assam Hybrid than we did. 
I have an abundant supply of seed and am disposing 
of my surplus, and am oareful in selection. The tea 
plant is remarkably well adapted to this climate, and 
from information obtained from Indian and Ceylon 
people, we should do well. No estates in Oeylon are 
yielding better than this. I have an area of nearly 
200 acres planted and a plucking area of 100 acres, but 
only partial on a portion; after 5 years old no difficulty 
in obtaining 1,000 lb. of manufactured tea per acre. 
We are still in infancy and the manufacture is still 
imperfect, though my teas have realized as high as 
2s 2d in London but we are not shipping, the colony 
at preseut taking all. I have an Excelsior Rolling 
Mil! and Davidson's Sirocco, and have just put up a new 
dryer by Gibbs & Barry. I had a drytr XL. ALL., 
Greig, Edinburgh. This troubled us but we have altered 
it and just got it to work with great advantage; but 
the alteration has made a new thing of it, having 
doubled its size and introduced new principles. I 
cannot say I like the Sirocco or any Troy machine. The 
rotating nature of Gibbs & Barry and Greig's certainly 
gives improved appearance to leaf. If Natal people 
go into tea planting the colony will be well able to 
compete with any other country and it possesses a finer 
climate than any other tea producing country. Mr. 
A. H. Bisset, formerly in coff ee in Oeylon, is going in 
largely for tea. He is situated about 70 or 80 miles 
below Durban ; I am 50 miles above Durban on North 
Coast. I am looking forward to a visit to Ceylon ere 
very long to pick up information as to manufacture. As 
to cultivation I am better able to work according to 
knowledge of the climate than to receive information 
from others whose experience is from a different 
climate. I am an old coffee planter here and the coffee 
failing, have gone into tea." 
Mr. Hulett's notice of the failure of coffee in Natal 
reminds us of the curious fact that of the two tropical 
products to cultivate which Indian labour was intro- 
duced into that colony, namely, sugar and coffee, 
nature seems at once to have placed her ban on the 
latter. Here, in Ceylon, the plant flourished and for 
the boLit part of half a century the results were gener- 
ally profitable, until blight overtook the plant and 
the enterprise in the shape of a blood-sucking 
fungus, green bug following so as to be in at the death, 
apparently. Sugar planting has been more of a suc- 
;ilthough scarcity and dearness of labour render 
competition with the neighbouring colony of Mauri- 
tius an uphill task. The Kaffirs do not take 
kindly to steady work, and a very elaborate report 
by Mr. Justice Wragg, formerly of the Ceylon Civil 
Service, which has reached us as well as comments in 
i ho Natal journals ,show that immigration from India 
has been anything but satisfactory in its results. So 
we suspect must Indian immigration as well as 
Chinese always be, where the climate is suffici- 
ently temperate to permit of labour by Europeans, 
or men of European origin, in the open air. 
Such is the case in Natal, and we were much 
interested, about a couple of years ago, with a 
statement by Mr. Hulett, which we copied into 
and commented on in the Observer, that Mr. 
Hulett and his sons performed the whole work 
of the tea estate ! The property was of course 
young and still is. As it advances, and especially 
if the sanguine (over-sanguine, surely) estimate of 
1,000 lb. of made tea per acre is fulfilled, a con- 
siderable force of hired labour will be absolutely 
necessary. What the result will be to Mr. Hulett 
and the pioneers of the Natal tea enterprise re- 
mains to be seen, but we believe the cost of labour 
will place limits to the extension of tea culture in 
Natal, such as will prevent that colony becoming 
a formidable factor in the supply of the world 
and in competition with India and Ceylon. We 
shall be the better able to speak with confidence 
on this topic when we have had time to study the 
report referred to. Meantime it is interesting to 
hear the result of a trial of Greig's XL (Excel) 
All Tea Machine, as well as of the Gibbs <fe 
Barry Drier. 
♦ 
COFFEE NOTES. 
(Rio News, Oct. 5th.) 
The local papers state that the coffee bloom in 
the district of Amparo, S. Paulo, is such as has 
never before been seen. 
Dandelion coffee essence is endorsed by the Lancet 
and British Medical Journal. A shilling bottle makes 
25 cups of coffee. With green Bio worth about 9d 
per lb. the essence 6eems cheap. 
Experiments are about to be make at coffee-grow- 
ing in the province of Eio Grande do Sul, the muni- 
cipalities of S. Antonia de da Patrulha, Oonceiijao 
do Arroio and Torres being considered suitable. 
From Baturite, Ceara, a correspondent writes to a 
journal in the capital of the province that the coffee 
crop has been very good, and if it can be sold at 
10$ per arroba, the product will reach 6,0M,0O0S 
or the crop will produce about 150,000 bags. 
♦ 
THE FEETILIZATION OF THE COFFEE 
PLANT. 
I send you the following notes on the fertilization 
of the coffee plant (C. arabica) which I made some 
time ago, and which may be interesting to those who 
study the subject. 
Your readers are doubtless aware that coffee was 
cultivated some twelve years ago to a very large ex- 
tent in Ceylon and South India, but owing to the 
attacks of leaf disease, the area has been rapidly re- 
duced, except, I believe, in some parts of Coorg and 
Mysore, where the climate is drier, and the leaves 
suffer less from the fungus. It has now been largely 
replaced by tea. 
The jasmine-like flowers of the coffee are borne in 
clusters in the axils of the leaves, and appear simul- 
taneously all over the estates. After a prolonged 
drought of one or two months, or even more, at the 
beginning of the year, there is generally a heavy fall 
of rain, sometimes lasting only an hour or two, some- 
times continuing for two or three days : the amount 
that falls must be enough to saturate the ground, 
and should not be less than one inch. 
In from six to eight days from the time of the 
first shower, the flowers burst into full blossom, last 
for a day, and then drop off. On the evening before the 
blossom is fully out, if the flowers are examined it 
will be found that they are partially open, the stigma 
being protruded and receptive. During the night the 
hum of insects can be distinctly heard, and I am 
of opinion that the flowers are largely fertilized by 
