682 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [April 2, 1888. 
the upper and under skin whole ; in a few days 
it found its way out, and from the chrysalis stat e 
emerged again as a moth. At the time 1 gav e 
you these particulars — about 1874 or 1875 — it wa s 
found only on the best fields of coffee, and wa s 
also abundant amongst trees of the forest. It is 
still in the same state, and I would rather have 
the coffee fields where it is most plentiful than 
those where it is scarce. The effects of it are 
seen in coffee and forest trees in dark brown 
blotches on the leaves, and it is rarely that these cover 
the space of a square centimetre : indeed it is noticed 
generally in round dark brown spots about a quarter 
of an inch in diameter. When about eight or ten 
years ago the coffee in the province of Eio de Janeiro 
began to decay, Professor Jobert discovered a small 
worm about the roots of the coffee trees, which he sup- 
posed to be of the genus Anguillula of prodigious 
fecundity, but his observations were not sufficiently 
n amerouB to enable him to arrive at any definite 
conclusion as regards its mode of life. Since then 
the estates in the lower part of the province of Eio 
(Serra Abaixa) have died out, and even now you 
cannot- find two planters of the same opinion as 
to the causes of the decay of so many coffee 
plantations. I have given you mine oftener than 
once, and it is still my opinion that through con- 
stant heavy cropping, want of treatment, and 
want of manure, the trees got so weak they be- 
came a prey to diseases of various kinds, these 
assumed an epidemic character, and young healthy 
trees caught the infection. 
Within the last few years distemper has appeared 
among the plantations along the valley of the 
Parahyba, the higher part of the province (Serra 
Acima), and many plantations are following the ex- 
ample of the lower parts of the province some 
years ago. The Government, on being applied to, sent 
a scientific gentleman from the staff of the national 
museum. A report has appeared but not a final one, 
but it confirms Professor Clement Jobert's story 
of the worm at the roots, and amidst a fair quan- 
tity of technical terms, the report issued by the 
national museum says, it is a nematoid, perfectly 
reviviscent in its feminile sacs of procreation in 
the interior of the pathological nodosities of the 
roots of the coffee tree ; from which we infer that 
procreation takes place inside the bark at the 
knotty parts of the roots. The report is a labo- 
rious one and reflects credit on the per- 
severance of Mr. Emil Goldi, its author. 
He hesitates in including the parasite in the 
genus Anguillitla, and proposes the name of MeloU 
dogyne exigua, (exigua as according with the 
form of the worm in the bolsa matrix.) The 
cause of the disease is not mentioned. It is said to 
be contagious and epidemic in all the regions which 
the scientist visited. As & preventative the farmers are 
advised to be careful in selecting good seed, and to 
apply manure, thus showing that in his opinion 
natural causes have something to do with it. Now, 
no one need be alarmed at this coffee disease, nor 
need there be any apprehension of its spreading to 
the new and vigorous districts opened during 
the last ten years, through the rapid extension of the 
railway system of transport. The valley of the 
Parahyba and the higher parts of the province of 
Eio are now receiving the same visitation which the 
lower parts of the province received from ten to 
fifteen years ago. In all the old districts of Brazil 
coffee trees are dying out, but new districts are 
opening far beyond the reach of the old and decayed 
ones, and the extra produce from these will continue 
to increase the yearly exports, and the diminution 
from the old plantations will be lost sight of as far 
as the consuming world is concerned. After all 
the disease-stricken parts produce but a small frac- 
tion of Brazil's enormous coffee crops. The quan- 
tity of forest land available for coffee in Brazil is, 
one might almost say, inexhaustible. The same 
system of cultivation will continue ; well I am 
wrong there, — I mean growing, for cutting down 
the weeds three or four times a year, in many 
instances only twice, once after crop picking and 
once before, and picking the crop is not cultiva- 
tion. Old districts will continue to die out as they 
have done all over the world ever since coffee planting 
began, and particularly where the system of coffee 
growing has been adopted. I will admit that the decay 
of coffee planting in Ceylon is an exception to the rule 
I am now laying down, for the disease Hemileia 
vastatria was a visitation similar to the potato 
disease in Great Britain forty years ago. In 
Ceylon the coffee trees in the young and vigor- 
ous districts of Madulsima were the first to show 
signs of the disease Hemileia Vostatrix, and the 
latter spread all over the country in a short space 
of time, sparing neither old nor young districts, 
Coffea arabica and Coffea liberica being both subject 
to its ravages. In Brazil there is no*, nor has there 
been a coffee disease of such a devastating nature. 
It will not be from disease amongst the coffee 
trees that the exports of coffee will suffer, the 
momentous labour question will certainly in a 
social point of view make great changes amongst 
the former producers, and might affect exports for 
a short time only, but it is being solved in a way 
that will make little difference to the consumers 
of coffee, and I would not advise producers in 
other parts of the world to look for a rise in 
prices owing to any of the above-mentioned 
causes affecting the exports from Brazil. 
Sugar, which has been king in the northern 
provinces of the Empire for many years, has been 
affected by the beetroot competition of Europe, 
and the production has been much less during 
the last ten years from this cause. The introduc- 
tion of the central factory system, which takes 
the manufacturing part from the hands of the 
cane grower and gives it to scientific manipula- 
tors, has effected a change. 
I cannot give figures as regards the northern 
provinces, but these, as well as the province of 
Bio, will feel a relief by the abolition of the export 
duty payable to the central Government of the 
Empire of 7 per cent ad valorem. The provin- 
cial duties of 3 per cent and 4 per cent ad valorem 
have in Bio de Janeiro and most of the other pro- 
vinces been also abolished. The former exemption, 
that for the central Government took, effect in 
the middle of October, and the provincial duties 
from the beginning of the year. This is a decided 
relief, for if we add municipal taxes, the loss 
indirectly to the planter was say '12 per cent on 
the full value of his produce, not 12 per cent on his 
profit, and meant a great deal. He can now look 
on it in the same light as if his cane fields were 
giving him one-eighth more without his requiring 
to spend more money on them. Or to make it 
appear plainer still : formerly he was at the ex- 
pense and labour of tilling his ground, transport- 
ing his cane to the mill, underwent the daily and 
nightly sweating in the sugar-house and sent it 
to the shipping port, and after all one-eighth (J) 
of his produce, loas handed over to the Government. 
The planters in the province of Bio had much 
need of this relaxation, for it was found that the 
abandoned coffee fields gave excellent crops of cane, 
but the price of sugar fell so low, they could make 
nothing by the old system of manufacture. They 
will now receive a fair price in the city of Bio 
de Janeiro, whioh receives, or has until now re- 
ceived, one-third of the sugar required for its con- 
sumption from the northern ports, Now that the 
