THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [February i, 1888. 
differ however oq this point. Have you ever examined 
this pest under a microscope ? If not, do so ; it is 
worth while. The prospects of crop are fairly good. 
I do not think, however, that many estates will do quite 
so well this year as last in the matter of coffee crops. 
Ooffee stripping, for some reason or another, appears 
to be much less prevalent throughout the district than 
last year, perhaps because there is less of it to strip. 
The acreage of tea has been largely increased recently, 
and this product gives every promise of being a success 
financially (as a rule), and it will be still more remuner- 
ative when the railway reaches the Pass. I do not 
suppose there is a single "featherless biped'' -as 
Oarlyle would say (black or white) in Haputale who 
does not approve of the broad-gauge scheme. I at 
least never heard of him. I expect that we shall 
have an enormous crop of stone fruit here this year. 
Plum and peach trees are covered with blossom, the 
plum trees especially are a sheet of white bloom. 
Last year an estate in the district produced excellent 
pears, literally by the hundred-weight*. Fruit culture 
is no doubt at present very much neglected in Uva, 
but with a little attention and some attempts at 
cultivation, I am confident that nearly all the English 
fruits would flourish here and would pay handsomely 
in the event of the railway coming. Someone should 
iatroduce cherry trees j they would, I am sure, do well. 
Are English fruit trees to be obtained at Hakgala ? 
If not they should be obtainable there. 
♦ 
CEYLON UP80UNTRY PLANTING REPORT: 
EFFECT 03? DRY WEATHER ON TEA. — "ABNORMAL ACT!" 
VITY UNDERGROUND " — UBIQUITY OF LEAP DISEASE 
ON COFFEE— AN INQUISITIVE CORRESPONDENT — HOW TO 
GB0W COFFEE = * NATIVE ' OR ' PLANTATION ' FASHION— 
THE WAY TO MAKE ESTATES PAY — A GOOD YIELD FROM 
A YOUNG TEA ESTATE — A WONDERFUL TEA MAKER. 
23rd Jan. 1888. 
It will soon become as nice a question as our 
future firewood supply what we are going to do 
with our labour, if the present dry weather con- 
tinues very much longer. Short work can tide us 
over a little, but the intervals between every round 
have to be longer each time, and even with that 
the average pluckings are getting less and less, and 
point clearly to ceasing altogether. A shoot that 
is willing to grow gets checked at once by the cold 
wind, and " bangy " is all you get from it. While 
we sit and wait for the renewal of fresh life and 
the rush of flush, we may get some comfort by 
concluding that during these early weeks of our 
" tropical winter" the plant is being strengthened 
in its roots. Anyhow, that was how I saw it put in a 
V. A,'s report on a tea estate. He was evidently anxious 
to be as cheerful as adverse circumstances would 
allow. There had been little visible improvement 
during the past six months, he said, but this was 
to be accounted for by an abnormal activity un- 
derground! The report was intended for a home 
proprietor, who, it is to be hoped, looked on the 
backward condition of his property and the steady 
increasing expenditure, in the light of the philosophy 
of the immortal Micawber, that of going back as 
it were for a little so as to get a better spring. 
Whatever the weather is doing for tea, there can 
be no doubt that it i3 suiting leaf disease all round. 
Our scientific authorities have been assuring us of 
late that we might look for our coffee being attacked 
by leaf disease in a milder form, and until this 
present outbreak it certainly seemed as if their 
forecast were to come true. Lut the attack that is 
on now is as bad as the worst I ever saw, and 
is all but ubiquitous. Even a struggling sucker 
on an old coffee stump has germs enough 
to inoculate a continent. In these degenerate 
days the coffee on this side has certainly not much 
to boast of in tho way of wealth of foliage, and 
' W hy in. I -npply the Colombo market-— Ei). J 
the shabby mantle of green that there is is fast being 
lost, and in a short time the trees will be leafless : 
our hopes for " next year " in regard to crop are there- 
fore rather cloudy, and fall very far short of wishes. 
While on coffee I am reminded of your corre- 
spondent " S. " who seeks through the Tropical 
Agriculturist some information on the question 
as to whether it would be more profitable now-a- 
days to grow coffee in native or plantation fashion.* 
He wants the subject considered under the follow- 
ing heads : — 
a. The co3t of growing and cultivating the two. 
b. The cost of picking and preparing the crop on kinds, 
the market. 
e. The difference in prices between the two kinds, 
and the scope of the markets to take them up. 
d. The cost of upkeeping the two kinds of estate, 
with consideration of their lasting and productiveness. 
e. As to whether disease affects each to an equaly 
extent. 
That 's a pretty big order, and would want a treatise 
rather than a portion of a letter to answer it. 
It has a strong likeness too in its comprehensive 
nature to the inquiry put by a young lady to her 
partner in the pauses of a quadrille " What is your 
opinion," she earnestly queried, " on the education 
question of England, Scotland, and Ireland ?" To 
attempt to answer " S." in any kind of fulness is 
not to be thought of, but since you, Mr. Editor, 
ask me what answer would I give, it is in short this : 
If your correspondent can get coffee to grow icell, 
either native or plantation style will reward him 
handsomely. During the palmy days of coffee I 
never heard of a European growing the plant ex- 
cept in the approved plantation fashion. What the 
native style would have done, had the ground 
been kept clean, could only be conjectured by 
patches here and there, too stony to hole, and in 
which " monkey-sown" plants came up of them- 
selves. Such patches I can remember on several 
estates, and they certainly did well, but were 
less regular in their bearing than the highly culti- 
vated portions. 
The several standard works on Coffee-planting 
will give your correspondent all the exact informa- 
tion he is in search of, and very much better than 
I could. Today, the coffee owned by Europeans, 
— -native patches having all but died out — has re- 
verted pretty much to a state of nature, except 
that weeds are kept down. Bullied and worried 
by the twin plagues of bug and leaf disease, he 
is a brave spirit who would expend money in 
ought else than gathering. By-and-bye, if coffee 
lasts, we will get to some kind of idea how a 
laissez-faire policy remunerates. I know of one 
man who, after much painful experience in the 
varied fields of tropical agriculture, has come to 
the conclusion that the only way to make estates 
pay is not to spend money on them ! There is 
a good deal of hidden wisdom in that policy, but 
it wants a smart man to successfully carry it out. 
The Hantane side is looking up as a tea district. 
What do you think of 252 lb. an acre from young 
tea from 2| to 3i years old ? This has been got 
from one of the new clearings on the "Hantane" 
estate. [Capital ! — Ed.] 
What the proper qualifications of a tea-maker 
should be evidently wants some clearing up. One 
man who applied lately for a vacant post offered 
as a testimonial a certificate of • his efficiency as 
a volunteer, signed by the gallant Major who 
commands the Kandy Company ! Another, who said 
he had had considerable experience in several 
factories, was asked what sort of prices had been 
* This letter and some further information on its 
subject will be found on page 545, and see also page; 
553-Eo. 
