THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [December i, 1888. 
ated from the straw. The straw is then piled up for 
the cattle, and the grain is winnowed from the chaff 
and dirt iu a machine — a Chinese invention of a thou- 
tan 1 years ago. The rice for export — Kow Moong 
and Kow Soon — is brought to the mills at Bangkok to 
be bulled and then packed up for export. The natives 
hull their rice for borne consumption in wooden mor- 
tars with wooden pestles, the lat'er they work with 
their feet, though many pound it by hand. There are 
now fifteen steam rice mills in Bangkok, one in course 
of construction, and one at Patriew, a city thirty miles 
west of the capital. The only fuel used iu these mills 
is the husk of the rice. There are two varieties of 
rice, Na Moong, which is sown broadcast over the 
fields and allowed to mature without further care and 
Na Soon or garden rice, the latter is allowed to grow 
to a certain height and is then transplanted. This is 
the rice of commerce, and is the best and highest 
priced of all grade-. The daily consumption of rice 
by the average Siamese family is estimated to be 
from one to two English quarts. — Journal of the 
Society of Arts. 
FLUSHING IN LOWEE DIKOYA. 
A planter writes: — "I send you by this post a 
Couple of specimen shoots representing the sort of 
thing Lower bikoya is producing at the present 
moment. The two shoots 1 send are the tippings 
taken off tea two months from pruning, which had 
previously been plucked over once about a fortnight 
or three weeks ago, and these two were taken off 
yesterday. I weighed the shoots before doing them 
up, to send you, and the two weighed § of an oz.; 
at this rate 43 shoots go to the lb. ! ! I should 
think this beats the record, don't it?" (Very 
likely; but we daresay Kelani Valley and Xalutara 
will begin to look out now for something more 
wonderful 1 
♦ 
PLANTING NOTES ON MATALE. 
An old planter writing from Maskeliya says : — " I 
have been reading your articles cn your trip with 
great pleasure and interest, as I know the most of 
the country you went over. Some of ycur remarks were 
a little out, but you are not to be blamed for that : 
your informants were at fault. 
"Mr. George Vetch (F. H.Vetch) was not the first that 
purohased land in 'Dawick ' Valley ; there was a 
Captain somebody that bought a block before that, 
but lost it, as he only paid the 10 per cent on the sale. 
" In the year 1860, 1st October, I went to the Kandy 
Kachcheri and bought the two blocks for Vetch, 
639 acres at the upset price, and it was put in to 
Mr. Francis H. Vetch's name, as George could not hold 
land, being in the Service. Wingate went with me 
intending to buy a block of I think 249 acres, but 
his heart failed him at the last moment.* You had 
better take a run up here and see our tea and factories; 
we can show something iu the latter that you will 
remember." 
CEYLON UPCOUNTBY PLANTING EEPORT. 
THE PROPHESIED " HARD FIGHT " WHICH OEYLON WAS 
TO HAVE IN OUSTING CHINA TEA, AND THE REALITY — 
A SAMPLE OF " REALLY GOOD CHINA " — A PREJUDICED 
JUDGE — ' WRINKLES ' IN TEA MANUFACTURE. 
30th Oct. 1888. 
When our tea industry was young, and pushing 
its way to the front, wholly on the merits of the 
tea produced, there were not wanting those who 
foresaw, in our struggle to gain a footing in the 
world's markets, a hard fight before us, and the 
probability of being wotstad in the end. The 
henthon Chinee, they said, was not easily beaten, 
etpecially in cheap working; and those who knew 
his cupability of "living for a month on the 
smell of a dirty oil rag " were satisiied that the 
Mongolian would hold his own spite of our beet 
* Be must have gone in soon after, and whatever 
Wingate owned or planted, be always hid a fencu 
of oleandere!— En. 
efforts to displace him. Very likely if we had 
been prosperous we would have considered a good 
deal more than we did, before we entered into a 
contest with China ; but we were not, and the 
general blank look-out, with the growing belief, 
that the tea plant had found in Ceylon a con- 
genial home, induced us to enter the lists. Per- 
haps too there was in some measure the courage of 
despair. For, as a horsey friend put it, and as indeed 
we all felt, we had saddled our last horse. It is 
now a matter of history how for the last three 
years Ceylon and Indian teas have, to a consider- 
able extent, displaced the China article, and it will 
suit us wonderfully well to find this portion of 
history repeating itself. 
Hearing so much of Chinese rubbish, — the stuff 
which is bought in bond at 4|d, and which with 
a pinch of Ceylon or Indian tea is considered a 
bargain at Is 6d to Is 9d a pound, and a perfectly 
suitable beverage for the toiling millions at home, — 
an old planter here, who would have nothing to do 
with such nastiness, sent an order to Shanghai for 
a half -chest of " really good China." He was 
curious to compare their best with ours. The 
half-chest came : 52 lb. in weight, and cost on 
the spot B95, or at the rate of Bl-84 a pound ! to 
which ere it reached Ceylon another B19-50 
had to be added for freight, octroi charges, duty, 
&o. He was good enough to send on a packet of 
it to me, and says : — " I got down this tea, 
more out of curiosity than anything else, to 
see how the rubbish compared on the spot with 
ours. The comparison, I can't say I regret, has 
turned out odious indeed I " and these pithy words 
really represent how the case stands. With the 
exception that the tea was very fragrant — " a fine 
nose," I presume, is the way to put it — there was 
nothing to commend it. If this tea, which cost 
in Shanghai Rl-84 a lb., is a really good China, — 
and at the money it ought to be, —it can only be 
a question of time for the complete ascendancy of 
the British-grown teas. It has been an old tale 
that it is only when in China you can get good 
tea, or know what good tea is- One of our mer- 
chants who had a long connection with the Empire 
of the Celestials was always very emphatic on 
this point, and to close the dispute for ever as 
to the inferior position our teas stood in, he agreed 
to get some of the really good kind sent here to 
him, and have his friends treated to a brew. When 
the trial was over, his friends were not by any 
means struck dumb, nor inclined to give the 
Ceylon article a second place ; and the old China 
merchant had to admit that the imported article 
did not approach to the remembrance he 
had of the teas he used to drink with such 
relish in the land of Cathay. The fact is, he 
had been for some time drinking Ceylon tea; 
and to return from that to the wishy-washy 
smoky-flavoured China, was about as hopeless, as 
for a man who breaks away from his early faith 
ever to go back to the old moorings rgain. 
Is there any secret in the manufacture of tea ? 
Does quality wholly depend on plucking and the 
other etceteras which form the everyday routine 
of a well-worked factory ? It would seem so, if what 
I am told be true, that B150 has been paid to the 
manager of Hoolankanda by a neighbour, who wants 
to know " how to do it." We will become a lively 
community by-and-bye when we ail take to selling 
our "wrinkles" for hard coin. The prospect opens 
a vista, in the shape of extras, which should rejoice 
the hearts of the theoretical as well as the practical 
man. The planter who works out or stumbles 
on a good thing will appreciate it all the more, when 
he finds that there is a money value attached to 
it. We will be having advertisements headed "The 
