June t, 1888.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
797 
(Continued,) 
Disposal of Crop. 
Estate! 
3 s 
o 1 
m 
v. a 
Mariawatte 
Dunedip... 
Dowalakanda., 
Hemes, watte 
8,774 215 220,474 
8,738 119 1^7,657 
6,720 72 124,663 
17,938 272 116,855 
w s, 
«w « 
V 
o 
5 63 
564 
6-55 
HM4 
O 
4- 77 
5 '62 
5- 75 
6'44 
22,600 42,170 678 588,648 603 5"57 
For the Ceylon Tea Plantations Company, Ltd. 
H. K. RUTHERFORD, 
Manager in Ceylon. 
f.th February, 1888. 
THE FIRST CEYLON TEA COMPANY AND 
ITS FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 
The very full and interesting Report published by 
the Ceylon Tea Plantations Company given 
above, deserves prominent notice, although 
there is|really no room for comment, so complete is 
the information afforded by the Directors and their 
able Ceylon Manager, Mr. H. K. Rutherford. The 
post interesting part to the fortunate shareholders 
in this prosperous Company is, of course, the suc- 
cessive dividends, aggregating 15 per cent for the 
past year. But to those outside the Company inter- 
ested in what can be done under the most favourable 
circumstance with tea in Ceylon, the best news is 
that the Company's tea from four different estates 
cost f. o. b. an average of only BM per lb., Maria- 
watte's portion being indeed so low as 4Jd. To 
realize the profit we have to eompare this with the 
average realized in London, namely, Is Id per lb. 
for over half-a-million lb. Of course, various charges 
have to be accounted for, but the wonder is that the 
dividends did not even amount to more than 15 per 
cent. It must be remembered, however, that a good 
deal of the tea is still too young to give full beariug 
crops. Everything promises well for this Company, 
and wo congratulate the shareholders on having 
their affairs so well looked aftor. Fifteen per cent 
oasts even our Colombo Wharf and Hotel Companies 
into the shade. 
THE TEA ENTEKI'KISH AND SUPPLIES 
OF FUEL. 
Somo of the sentiments expressed by our corre- 
spondent " X.Y.Z." (pago KO'.l) wo have long entertain- 
ed and strongly expressed. Wo hoped and we still 
cherish tho hope that both for railway and tea 
estates purposes, somo artificial fuel will bo in- 
vented which will supersedo both coal and wood 
fuol. When Sir Arthur Gordon wa<s n n one occa- 
sion looking over the trace of tho railway from 
Nanuoya to Haputale, wo drow his attention to 
the vast expansos of forest along tho route, re- 
served avowedly to supply the railway with fuol, 
and wo oxprossud tho hop.' abowmoniiunod. tit* 
Excellency expressed his full concurrence in this 
hope, as well ho might, for we can conooivo of f«tw 
more barbarously wasteful systems than that of 
denuding forest lands, especially upland forest lands 
for mere fuel purposes. The fad about the denuda- 
tion of forest, in a mountain country lessening 
the amount of rainfall, being once abandoned, 
as it ought to be by all sensible men, the hill 
and mountain forest lands, with generally good 
soil and in a specially salubrious climate, will be 
unlocked for profitable cultivation, and no one can 
doubt that it would be more profitable for planters 
to devote all their attention, land and capital to tea, 
rather than preserve indigenous forest or plant por- 
tions of estates with forest trees. But men for whose 
opinions our correspondent expresses great respect 
insist that one or the other alternative must in 
general be resorted to. Indeed, the Visiting Agent 
of a well-known group of tea estates in Amba- 
gamuwa, did not hesitate to say to us that he 
considered the proper proportion of forest reserve for 
timber and fuel to be one-third of the acreage devoted 
to tea. This is very different to our correspondent's 
off-hand and we fear many will hold comical 
solution of the difficulty, by making over to each 
cooly employed on an estate, (one per acre, as a 
rule,) as sufficient for purposes of warmth and 
cooking, the prunings of an acre of tea I Our ex- 
perience of Ramasamy is that he is much too 
particular about the lasting as well as the burning 
qualities of the fuel he uses, to be put off with 
anything so unsubstantial and evanescent as tea 
twigs, which, some may think ou_;ht to be returned 
to the soil in which they grew. They may not 
restore much fertilizing matter to the ground, but 
if any manurial matter is added, the buried twigs 
will make it doubly effectual by keeping the soil 
open and so securing its aeration. As to per- 
mitting the coolies to burn cow dung as fuel, 
all planters who know how readily and largely 
tea responds to an application of this substance, 
will receive the proposition as we do with groan3 
of incredulity and condemnation. To talk of 
burning cowdung on a tea estate is equivalent 
to throwing rupee paper into the fire. We believe 
most planters will agree with us that tea prunings 
would not be acceptable to the cooly as fuel, and 
that as regards the valuable product of cattle sheds, 
the coolies ought to be stringently restricted to limited 
supplies for the necessary, cleanly and salubrious 
process of coating the floors and inner walls of 
lines and their verandahs with a substance so 
wholesome, clean-looking and so calculated to cause 
insects to flea away. We feel sorry that a writer 
whom we esteem so much should so little appre- 
ciate two things: the Tamil coolies' appreciation of 
good solid firewood ; and the almost incalculable 
value of cow dung as a fertilizer for tea. To 
coffee in latter days this substance too often merely 
carried a fresh access of destructive white grubs. 
To tea it always adds a fresh and luxuriant growth 
of flush. Should grubs happen to be present, they 
turn up their noses at the feeding rootlets of tea 
and die of inanition, while the tea continues to 
flourish. If only a greater demand cxisteu for well 
fed beeves, cattle establishments on tea estates 
might become far moro profitable than they were 
on coffee plantations. Tea prunings and cow 
dung cakes for fuel, being out of the running, fuel 
of some kind is a necessity, and wo should really like 
to have details of the modo in which the difficulty 
arising from the absence of firewood on Kotusohild 
and other old estates has been overcome. Our 
correspondent's off-hand statement that I' ■ lohes 
have net only existed without firewood for a 
score of years, but put on abundant adipose 
tissue, belongs to a form of logic, for which he 
would have been "ploughed," ha I ho used it at Maris- 
ohal Collec*' Aberdeen, or v 'laevtT ho studied the 
