THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [April 2, 1888. 
was clear profit — minus plucking and curing charges. 
A.s Mr Cox says, " Most of our tea is too young for us to 
say what the ultimate yield may be, but, taking this 
and other matters iuto consideration, a liberal estimate 
some years hence, for Central and South Travmcore, 
thould be : — For tea 2501b per acre, for coffee 3 cwt. 
per acre, and for cacao nothing per acre. From 
he above you should be able to judge of 
he capabilities of tho soil. Our labour is 
cheap, but not well under control. On this bead, how- 
ever, we are well off though, perhaps, not better than 
Oeylon." In conclusion I hope r.o one will blame me 
for running down the country, for such is not my in- 
tention. I have lived in it too long not to feel kindly 
towards it.— M.— Travancore, 1st March 1888. 
THE BREAD SEED PLANT. 
Mr. J. M. Wood, Curator of the Botanic Gardens, 
sends us the following in reference to a subject 
referred to at the meeting of the Botanic Society: — 
I have received from the director of Kew Gardens 
a ism ill quantity of seed of Evagrostis abyssinica, or 
" Teff," which had been obtained from Abyssinia 
through the Foreign Office. " Teff is one of the cereals 
indigenous to Abyssinia. It is cultivated at a height 
which varies between 6,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea 
level. The flour of Teff is very white, and produces 
bread of excellent quality." 
In Bruce's travels vol. vii., pp. 184-6, he says, " This 
grain is commonly sown all over Abyssinia, where it 
seems to thrive equally well on all f-orts of grounds ; 
from it is made the bread which is commonly used 
throughout Abyssinia. The Abyssin ans, indte 1, have 
plenty of wheat, and some of it of an excellent quality. 
They likewise make as fine wheat bread as any in the 
world, both for colour and for taste ; but the use of 
wheat bread is chiefly confined to people of the first 
rank. On the other hand, ' Teff ' is used by all sorts 
of people from the king downwards, and there are 
kinds of it which are esteemed fully as much as 
the wheat. The best of these is as white as flour, 
exceedingly light, and easily digested. . , . The 
fruit or seed is nblo.ig, and is not so large as the 
head of the smallest pin ; yet it is very prolific, and 
produces these seeds in such quantity as tq yield 
a very abundant crop in the quantity of meal." 
In a paper written by M. E. Coulbeaux, missonaire 
apostolique, on Abyssinie, on the 27th Sept. last, 
he says : — " These seeds almost equal barley in their 
growth, and the rapidity with which-they come up. 
Sown, at the end of March, or in April or May, they 
arrive at maturity at the beginning of September. 
Sown in June or July the crop may be reaped in 
October. The thaf comes up very vigorously in 
heavy lands, but its large and high tuft is richer in 
herbage than in grain. . . It prefers light soils, 
and adapts itself even 1o the most sandy ; it then 
produces slender, wiry stems, and supports better 
the weight of its ear. ... It is not necessary 
to wait until it is quite dry, like barley, to cut it, 
for when too ripe and dried the grain sheds at the 
least shock. It is cut as soon as the green ear 
turns to grey in the early morning, and is 
placed in heaps with the ears inwards, and covered 
to preserve it from the rain. It is. then left to ripen 
and undergo a certain amount of fermentation." 
The seed which I received have been tested here, 
and germinated in three or four days. I shall be 
glad to supply it in small packets to any one who 
cares to take the trouble to test it, and will report 
to me on the result. It occurs to me that though it 
may not be found to be of much value here as a 
cereal, it may, on account of the rapidity of its 
growth, b«! useful as a fodder plant, especially in 
the higher districts of the colony: and it is said to 
thrive a)h e maize and wheat cannot be successfully 
cultivated. — Globe. 
PADDY (RICE) CULTIVATION AND 
MANURING IN CEYLON.— II. 
Befpre commencing to drop you a few more lines 
on this subject in continuation of my last, I must 
thank tho correspondent to whom you referred 
it for his valuable remarks. What I wrote about 
the deterioration of quality by the u e of bone 
manure is being daily proved by experienc , but I am 
unable to give a sound explanation why it is so. It 
is known amongst many goyas that the pad ly obtained 
by the use of bone manure cannot be kept for 
such a length of time after being boiled, as those 
obtained without its use. In Mr. Cochran's recent 
experiments (reported in the February number of 
the T. A.), I see that he found that the ears of 
paddy obtained by the use of bone-dust to contain 
more seed, but of inferior quality than those obtained 
without its use. Thus the goyas' experience was 
proved by more learned experiments. There must be 
some reason for this : either the bones have some 
effect in increasing the number of seed, and, as the 
other materials found go to form so many seeds, the 
quality is deteriorated or something like that. Cow- 
dung consists principally of nitrogenous matter and 
bones of phosphatic matter and lime. There is 
better lime present in the grains of rice, and we 
can think that the excess of lime taken in by the 
use of boue-dust is the cause of deteriorating the quality 
of seed. When bone manure is mixed with cowdung, 
the percentage of lime will be lessened, and th« 
mixture would be advantageous. It is also quite evi- 
dent that lime does not play an important part in 
the growth of the rice-plant as in Mr. Cochran's ex- 
periment. The pot in which lime was used did not 
produce ears. It is of course not owing to any bad 
effects of lime, but for want of other materials. 
I once read a suggestion by one of your corre- 
spondents on the use of a mixture of poonac and 
lime. But I doubt very much that lime would do 
any good in mixture with it as a manure for paddy. 
Nor do I suppose that lime could have any bene 
ficial effect on paddy except by its improving the 
condition of 1he soil. A mixture of cattledung and 
poo nac will form a cheap manure for paddy lands 
and a more useful manure could be made by a 
mixture of cowdung, poonac, and bones. As it is 
found that bones, though a good manure is not suit- 
able for paddy, because of its bad effects on the 
quality of the seed, — and, as cowdung though keep- 
ing a most part of its materials for a long time, 
but parting of its nitrogenous matter very soon, 
particularly in this country, because it is not prepared 
well and because of the climatic effects. A mixture 
of cattledung, poonac and bones will make an ex- 
cellent and cheap manure for our Oeylon paddv soils. 
Minuwangoda, 6th March 1888. W. A. D. S. 
PACKING PLANTS FOB MAILING. 
A lady writing from Livingston country, New York, 
to Park's Floral Magazine gives her method as follows: — 
" During the past three years I have sent out 
more than a hundred packages of plants and slips, 
and out of that number three only were reported 
unsatisfactory. One was frozen on the way, the dis- 
tance being considerable, and a ' cold snap ' came 
on after they were started- One was reported to 
have been in bad condition from delay on the journey, 
and the third was lost in the mails. These have 
been sent to Maine, Florida, Texas, California, Da- 
kota and intermediate points. 
"My method of packing is this: Take sphagnum 
moss if you can get it, if not use wood's moss, wet 
in tepid water, and squeeze just so it will not drip, 
wrap this around the roots of plants, or cut end of 
slips,and over this put waxed paper, the paraffine 
paper used by grocers to wrap butter in is best 
and cheap. But if you cannot get that, take tissue 
cr thin wrapping paper, lay on a warm stove grid- 
dle, and run over it a piece of bees-wax until every 
part is covered with a film of wax, then wrap the 
parcel of plants in waxed paper, then in thin wrap- 
ping paper, turning over the ends of the paper, to 
keep out the air, and tie. Next take a piece of 
pasteboard as wide as the parcel is long, and long 
enough to go twice around it ; roll them in this and 
tie firmly. Now you are ready for the wrapper. Use- 
some strong, smooth paper, else if the distance is 
great, the address may wear off before it reaches 
its destination. Write the address plainly in two 
places ou the wrapper; and across one end in plain 
