736 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [May i, 1888 * 
with inferior China teas, and consequently sold as 
China tea. The percentage of Indian tea used in 
England has also been steadily using, for wheress 
in 1S05, China tea formed 97 per cent of the entire 
consumption, in the first quarter of 1887 the pro- 
portion was 51 per cent of Indian to 49 per peat of 
China tea. 
Notwithstanding the steadily increasing production 
in India, China tea is still imported into the country ; 
in 1885-80 about four million pounds were imported, 
but mainly into Bombay, where none is grown, and 
much of it for re-export to the Persian Gulf, Af- 
ghanistan, and some to Trieste, where it arrives as 
Indian tea. 
Statistics concerning the consumption of tea show 
that the greatest tea-drisikers are the Australians, 
who in 1881 consumed 81 ounces per head of the 
population. England ranked next with 73 ounces, 
while the United States of America came next with 
21 ounces. Russia, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark 
rank highest among Continental uations as tea-drinkers, 
but they only consume from 7 to 8 ounces per 
head of the population. 
Dr. Feistmantel fully indorses the prevalent English 
opinion as to the superiority of Indian to China 
tea, and attributes its being almost unknown on the 
Continent mainly to the fact that " China tea " is 
a much older, and therefore better known, product 
throughout Europe.- Even in England, Indian tea 
took years to establish its reputation. It will in the 
end be as much appreciated on the Continent as 
it in this country if a few merchants and tradesmen in 
different Continental cities, whose commercial standing 
will be a guarantee for the purity of the goods they 
supply, are induced to keep it. 
A special chapter is devoted to the cultivation of tea 
in Ceylon, and shows the marvellous progress made by 
this new industry in consc queuce of the coffee disease 
having caused the conversion of so many coffee plant- 
ations into tea plantations. In 1875 only 1080 acres were 
under tea, whereas in 1885 no less than 102,000 acres 
were occupied by it, and the exports rose from 82 
pounds in 1S75-76 to nearly four million pounds in 1884- 
85. The plantations are principlly in the western and 
southern provinces of Ceylon. ■ 
Dr. Feistman'-el's work concludes with an interest- 
ing chapter on caravan teas, compiled f> O n an article 
by Herr Walter Japha, published in the Eivue Coloniale. 
Internationale for September-October 1887. 
Some amongst us are apt to feel a certain amount of 
jealousy at the not infrequent employment of foreigners 
iu Government appointments, and this feeling is per- 
haps intensified by the knowledge that in this matter, 
as in Free Trade, there is no apparent reciprocity — 
for we seldom hear of the employment of Englishmen 
by Continental Governments ; but the present is an 
instance, and by no means a solitary one, of the great 
service done to us by foreigners who avail themselves 
of the information they have collected in the course of 
their employment by our Government to diffuse among 
their fellow-countrymen such an intelligent knowledge 
of the productions of our distant possessions, as is 
calculated to largely benefit commerce or by leading 
to an extensive demand for the goods of which they 
write. 
It would seem, however, scarcely just that the work 
of diffusing this knowledge should be left to other na- 
tions, seeing that the benefits are to reaped by our- 
selves. It is hardly likely that in England it will be 
recognized, as it is in some other countries, to be part 
of the duties of any Government Department ; but why 
should il not be part of the work of such a body as the 
London Chamber of Commerce, or the new Imperial 
Institute, to disseminate information regarding our 
Colonial and Indian products among Continental ua- 
tions, and to translate and circulate any useful works 
on commercial and kindred subjects, published in for- 
cigu language", among such classes of the community 
as they would ho likely to interest ?— J. li. Koyle.— 
iVutuiv. 
TEA IN CEYLON AND NATAL. 
Mr. Percy Swiuhurne, manager of the Natil Tea 
Company, Isipingo, writes :— Iu an iuteresling 
article to-day, touching on the various products of 
the colon}', you compare the progress made iu the 
tea industries in Ceylon and Natal. To understand 
how it is that Ceylon has been able to make such 
extraordinarily rapid strides, it is recessaray to ex- 
plain the peculiar conditions which favour tea 
planting there. Ceylon is, as is well known, an 
oval-shaped island, about as large as Ireland. It is 
nearly all flat and level with the sea,* and dotted 
with swamps, villages, and cocoanut plantations, 
and here and. there pimpled with isolated 
blocks of hills of a few thousand feet ; but 
in the centre of the land there is one block of hills 
about 40 miles square, and it is in this spot, which 
is thus only about as large as Lincoln County in 
England, that the whole of the coffee plantations 
were collected together. Here, in a lovely valley, 
with encloseel ornamental waters, in which the Swiss- 
like cottages and dense foliage of the hillsides are 
reflected, lies Kandy, the termiuus of the railway; f 
and further up, winding along splendid macada- 
mised roads, Nuwara Elliya, the sanatarium can be 
reached. Whole valleys and hillsides for miles 
were covered with coffee, in all about 400,000 to 
500,000 acres. Many of these estates have for 
years given from £10,000 to £30,000 profit annually; 
but the owners were too greedy, aud killed the 
goose that laid the golden eggs. Successive heavy 
crops weakened the trees, which were again revived 
by heavy pruning, only at last to succumb to a 
virulent disease, which has found its way even to 
Nata! — another case of the sins of the fathers 
being visited upon the innocent children. But to 
come to the point, the half-million acres are ' 
generally iu a high state of cultivation, and it is 
only necessary for the planters to run out there tea 
seeds between the rows of the coffee trees, and to 
convert their coffee mills into manufacturing houses. 
With reference to ourselves at Isipingo, the bullc of 
our tea seed is cot yet sown, and we cannot 
expect to produce more than a few pounds of tea 
this year; but next year we hope to obtain 
10,000 lbs. to 15,000 lbs. from a part of the estate 
which has been very closely planted iu order to give 
us a quick return and cover expenses while the 
other tea is growing. — Natal Mercury. 
« 
Stopping Vine Shoots. — In the Bulletin d' Arbori- 
culture Mi Pynaert, alluding to the common prac- 
tice of stopping the shoots at the second leaf 
above the bunch, says that in the vineries at Manage, 
in Belgium, an interesting experiment has been 
made. In a span-roofed house in which fifty to sixty 
Vines are growing : those on one side of the house 
had been pinched-in to the second leaf beyond the 
bunch, while on the other side of the house the 
shoots had been allowed to attain a length even of 
6 or 7 feet. The bunches on the Vines where the 
shoots were allowed to extend unchecked, were quite 
as good as those on the pruned Vines, and, moreover, 
they were three weeks in advance of them — a point 
of the greatest moment in Vine forcing. M. Bir:- 
venich confirmed the statement of M. Pynaert. It 
is greatly to be hoped that someone will try this 
experiment here. The vineries at Ohiswick offer 
excellent opportunities for carrying out such an 
experiment, and at no pecuniary coet. Will the 
Chiswick Committee of the Council kindly note ? — 
Gardeners' Chronicle. 
* But for the fact that one-sixth of the island 
is hilly and mountainous, it would not have been 
the scene of the great coffee enterprise to be suc- 
ceeded by the probably much greater tea in- 
dustry. — En. 
t The terminus now is olose to Nuwara Eliya.— 
Ei». 
