6oo THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [March i, 1888. 
in the history of the tea trade when the >upply from 
China was less than 50 per cent of the total imports iuto 
this country. Not many years ago the percentage of 
the supply from China was very large indeed. The 
increase which has taken place in the quantity of tea 
produced by Ceylon is really astonishing. It has, in 
round numbers, doubled itself every year for the last 
seven years, and Mr. Shand is well within the mark 
when he estimates that in 1890 the produce will be 
about 40,000,000 lb. If it increases at the present rate 
the amount will be fully 50,000,000 lb. I do not know, 
ladies aud gentlemen — ladies particularly — whether you 
fully realise what a million is. I will try to bring home 
to you by a few figures what is the magnitude of the 
increase that has taken place in the production of 
Ceylon tea. Mr. Shand has not gone so far back as 
1876, but I learn from an authentic source that the 
export of tea in that year was 282 lb. as compared with 
13,500,000 lb. at the present time. Now, 282 lb. re- 
presents a pretty good load for a man. It is what 
a strong man can just manage to carry on his back. 
Within half-a-mile of where we are met, I know of 
a case where men are in the habit daily ef taking on 
their backs sacks of corn, each of which weighs about 
276 lb. and carrying thern from a barge to a store 
across the road. The produce of tea in Ceylon was, 
as I have said, 282 1b. in 1876— that is, only 6 1b. 
more than the weight of one of these sacks, and one 
strong man might have carried the whole of it. It is 
now 13,500,000 lb. To carry this load, supposing they 
were all engaged at the same time, would require 
47,870 men. If the quantity becomes 40,000,000 lb. in 
1890 — as is not unlikely — 141,000 men would be re- 
quired to carry it, and if the yield at the end of the 
century should be 100,000,000 lb. — and, according to 
the past rate of progress, that would be the amount — 
no fewer than 354,600 men would be required to carry 
it. I hope this illustration will give you a better idea 
of what has been the growth of the tea industry in 
Ceylon than the mere mention of so many millions 
of pounds. I now call on Mr. E. Noel "Walker, Colo- 
nial Secretary of Ceylon. 
Mr. E. Noel Walker, c.m.g. (Colonial Secretary, 
Ceylon) : In accepting the invitation to offer a few 
remarks on this occasion, I did not think I could 
make any effective contribution to the subject under 
discussion. I oame chiefly as a listener and for in- 
struction, and I have certainly attained that object. 
The present audience contains many persons who, 
being connected with and having experience of Ceylon, 
are much more able to be of service in the con- 
sideration of this subject. The whole of my life has 
been spent in the West Indies, where, as yet, tea 
has not been cultivated on a commercial and exten- 
isve scale. It is true that in Jamaica at least the 
cultivation has been experimentally established by 
Government, under the direction of my late fellow- 
worker, Mr. D. Morris, now the Assistant Director 
at Kew. Experts in this county have reported the 
tea which has been produced in the mountain lands 
of Jamaica to be of high quality and of good marketable 
value. In the past few mouths, I am happy to say, 
the prospects of all West Indians have materially im- 
proved by the rise in the price of their chief staple, as 
well as by the promise of the abolition of the foreign 
bounties on sugar and of changes in the fiscal system 
of the United States. I hope my friends in the West 
Indies will take example from the planters of Ceylon 
whose energy and success have been so well put be- 
fore us by Mr. Shand, and who, in fact, seem to have 
outrivalled the "heathen Chinee" in his own speci- 
ality. The record is, I think, one of which. the plant- 
ing community of Ceylon may well be proud. In a 
few hours I shall myself start of the interesting scenes 
of the lecture of this evening, and I desired to be 
present to join in thanking Mr. Shand for the services 
I knew he would render the Colony by his Paper. I 
feel quite sure he is correct in asserting that acquain- 
tance with Ceylon tea is certain to lead to its appre- 
ciation and general consumption, and the Royal Col- 
onial Institute, in affording the opportunity of dis- 
xeminating tbe information, has added another to the 
many good works it has done iu the direction 
of uniting tbe Colonies aud the Mother Country. 
Of Mr. Shand himself, I should like to say that even 
a limited acquaintance with him has induced me to 
entertain a feeling of regret that we have no longer 
his immediate assistance at the Council table in Ceylon, 
but I feel sure I may say that by his Paper this 
evening, and his labours elsewhere, he has only changed 
the useful position he occupied within the Colony for 
an equally useful one iu the Mother Country. Among 
the pleasant associations of my last days in this coun- 
try, permit me to say that I shall always euerish the 
recollection of this evening's meeting: 
Mr. Randall Pyte : — I may be said to represent the 
unfortunate tea trade of China, which according to 
the very able address we have just heard from Mr. 
Shand, is so soon to be wiped out by the overwhelming 
increase in the production of India and Ceylon. The 
China trade in tea is not dead yet, however, and 
while I should not wish to throw the slightest cloud 
over the happy prospect that lies before Ceylon, still 
I think both Ceylon and India, but most especi- 
ally the former, will be wise not to underesti- 
mate the strength of so powerful a rival as China, 
and there are certain facts bearing on the cost of 
production which must be taken into account. I have 
been a tea planter in Formosa, where the cost of la- 
bour is slightly greater than on the mainland of China; 
in Johore, where the cost is now very much the same 
as in Ceylon ; and, during a residence of nearly 22 years 
in China and the East, have had frequent occasion 
to inquire into the cost of labour in the large China 
tea districts; and, taking the present value of the 
China dollar as 3s 2d for the purpose of calculation, 
the cost in China — where, too, it must be remem- 
bered, the labour of women and children is largely 
utilised — averages about 5s per month per head, as 
against 6d per day named by Mr. Shand ; or, count- 
ing only working days, say, about 12s per month. 
Then, again, there is the consideration of climate. In 
Ceylon, as far as I understand, the tea picking goes 
on nearly all the year round ; the plants have no 
rest from a winter, and are not reinvigorated by frosts 
such as they encounter in China, nor have they the 
advantage even of such cold as prevails in the winter 
in Formosa or India. Now you cannot always go on 
drawing cheques on a bank without putting some money 
in it, and the loss which the plant suffers from constant 
deprivation of a portion of its leaves must be re- 
paired, either by the use of fertilisers, or by giving 
the plant a rest and trusting to nature, or both. As 
regards fertilisers, so far as my experience goes I am 
not convinced that any such aid will really supply 
that which the picking takes away, and if they are 
used there is alway the risk that such use may prove 
the source of the same trouble that befel the coffee 
plantations, for many people are of opinion that the 
disease which attacked the coffee trees arose from 
the use of manures. In China the use of powerful 
manures has not been found necessary, and I have 
never known anything used beyond a small quantity 
of bean cake (an exceedingly cheap commodity), which 
is sometimes dug into the ground iu the spring. In 
regard to tbe competition of other countries, I may 
remind you that in Formosa alone, which now pro- 
duces 12 millions of pounds of tea, the area of the 
possible tea land could easily be increased many 
fold — possibly tenfold. Oriental countries are in 
the habit of moving along very placidly as a rule, 
and are hard to move out of the paths beaten by 
custom ; but when an awakening does come they 
move rapidiy enough, and I think it will be found 
that when China wakes up to the fact that she 
must tend her tea plantations more carefully, that she 
must adopt more scientific methods of manufacture ; 
when she chooses to relieve her people of some of 
the heavy burden of taxation now pressing upon them, 
amounting to about 50 per cent on the value of low 
kinds of tea ; when she sets her house in order, 
and as a rule makes her tea honestly — which she has 
not always done — she may be found even a more 
dangerous rival in the future than §he has been in 
the past, and may make it very difficult to find a 
market even for the smaller quantity named of 
40,000,000 lb. of Ceylon tea. 
Mr. W. H. TaEACHKR (late Governor of British 
