March I, 1889] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
633 
PROSPECTS AND CONDITIONS OP TEA, 
COFFEE, CINCHONA, CACAO AND 
OTHEE PRODUCTS. 
We now resume our notes on this subject, and 
first wo give prominence to the following comments 
on our editorial on page 612, as full of interest: — 
" The tea estate referred to in Maskeliya is 250 
acre) all more or less in boaring. Estimate of crop 
this year 50,000 lb., expenditure will be R17,500, 
or say :i£> cents per lb. in Colombo. Kindly note 
that those figures refer to the present season, 
not last. 
"Dikoya coffee is now very free of bug, but not 
perfectly so. It was the year before last that 
Warriapolla did so well, not last year, but it is 
again to the front this season with a yield of 2,600 
bushels of all sorts. The orop the year before 
last was 4,900 of all sorts not i,700. 
" The observations about cinchona applied to new 
land, but it may be safely asserted that nowhere 
on tho Kandy side of the country is it possible to 
grow the line cinchona we did 10 and 15 years ago. 
Deterioration of stook is the explanation generally 
given and acoepted, but tho fact that imported seed 
does no better than that of local growth is one which 
rather upsets this theory. 
"I think tho Bolivian seed referred to cost RGO 
per ounce, but I am not quite sine of this ; nor 
am I certain that it all failed." 
As regards Cinchona on new and old land, we 
learn that even in Uva it is scarcely possible to 
get cinchona trees to flourish a second time on 
tho same land, bo that we suppose planting up 
the same clearing a second time is unheard of 
north of Kandy? 
Before passing away from tea we may refer to 
the revival it has al'fordod at least in one case of 
a planting district that was supposed to have 
disappeared finally from the roll long before 
"Ichabod" had been written generally on coffee 
in the Kandy dietriots. We rofer to Kadugannawa. 
"Why has Kadugannawa been struck out of the 
Association roll ?" asked Forresc Harper at the first 
Planter*' meeting after his return. " It has not 
been struck out — it has gone out I " was the reply. 
Alas thou for poor old Kadugannawa, where Harper 
uo] ki d for years ,on Franklands, at the tune that the 
present Acting District Judge of Colombo was the 
happy proprietor of ltoslin. For many years, the word 
abandoned has been the distinctive mark in the 
Directory opposite most Kadugannawa properties. Hut 
tea lias brought a change. We have, (or example 
tho well-known oxtonsive GonaAdika property which 
undor Mr. Wm. Macgrogor's management, gives 
promieo of becoming a very fine tea estate for the 
•' Uona Adika Tea Co. Limited." So with Mr. 
A. H. Thomas's good work on Mr. liarpor's old 
diggings, Franklands, where there aro now 100 
acres of fine tea ; again Mr. Shclton Agar is re- 
viving tho glory of Alpitly Kandy— where Donald 
Muegiogor lived and labourud so long —and he is 
trying not only tea but cacao, arooanuts a. id coco- 
nuts. Again Kukunagalla, u property of 300 acres, has 
just been purchased by Messrs. Nicol of Dimbula 
and Hapiitalo, who ore suro to turn it to good uso, 
while wo noed scarcely refer to tho well-known 
revival of Sinnapitia, Mercantile, Kirind*. and other 
properties. There is encouragement to tea planters 
in k.i. Uigur. :iawa, it soems, from the favourable ro- 
ll nr| given of lLo teas as yielding a specially strong 
liquor due to tho prevalence of irouslone iu tho 
soil. So much for old Kadugannawa redicivus. 
In dmouHHing the future of " tea" Lhore can bo 
no doubt that tho planter who has I » ; capital 
9Qtln pur acre lor average-yielding estates, can 
«Uud the battle of competition lm -est. A profit 
10 
of a penny a pound is equal to a return of 10 per 
cent for, we suppose, the majority of Ceylon tea 
plantations, while the capital outlay on Assam 
properties being, it is said, over, rather than 
hundred R500 per acre, the percentage of profit 
would be much less from the Rame penny. 
Cacao cultivation is described by Visiting Agents 
as a whole, judging by their Ceylon experience, as 
about the most uncertain of any of our new 
products. But is this not generalising from 
rather too limited an experience. The Dutch 
writer on Caoao in Dutch Guiana agrees exaotly 
with the above experience up to the tenth year 
of the tree : he says in effect, nothing can be more 
unsatisfactory or troublesome to the planter than 
a " Cacao Walk " up to ten years of age, but 
then from that point on to a hundred years, few 
products give less trouble or more regular crops. 
We trust yet to see the " Cacao Walks " in our 
own Dumbara, Matale and Uva valleys verify this 
experience. So far, there have been some woeful 
disappointments about crops : we hear of one case 
where after the pods were fully set, indeed well 
on growing, 1000 cwt. was considered a very safe 
estimate, but the actual result only gave 290 cwt. I 
A curious circumstance is mentioned to us in con- 
nection with an experiment in Pepper vine cultiva- 
tion on Wariapolla estate, Matale. The crop in 
many cases was a disappointment, but there was 
no chance of picking what did mature, for the birds 
effectually disposed of the berries ! — Fortunately, 
or unfortunately, few places are so highly-favoured 
with "songsters of the grove" as Warriapola. 
We now turn to Caudamoms, and it is the opinion 
of more than one expert — that is, experienced es- 
tate inspector— that this spice has in many cases 
given a handsomer return than any other tropical 
product touched during the past ten years. We 
are assured of 15 acreB giving 660 lb. each, or a 
total crop of 10,600 lb. of cardamoms (worth from 
2s to 2s 6d per lb.) and again of 50 acres giving 
28,600 lb. The famous Kandanewera crop ex- 
cited muoh attention one year when even the 
pleasant-spoken pessimist of the North was dis- 
appointed, in returns beyond his belief, in prices also 
above his expectation, although finally he found 
consolation in the anticipation that after so big 
a orop, short ones must follow ! Now-a-days, 
however, cardamoms clearings do not oome on 
quite so well as Borne years ago and the Malabar 
variety is almost entirely discarded in favour of tho 
Mysore kind. 
As rogards Tobacco, tho question is started as to 
whethor the finer varieties will succeed as freely 
in Ceylon as is expected. There can be no ques- 
tion of the ready growth of the ooarso oountry 
variety, but plants from soed from Havana, 
Virginia &o. are not so easily raised. The Tobaooo 
Company Limited are, it is understood, to employ 
a practical man of special experience in tobaaco in 
Sumatra or some equally well-known tobaoco grow- 
ing country. 
Meantime with referenoe to the fear that 
other oxoticB — for even the oooonut palm is 
not reckoned indigenous I — are going out we 
are assured that laiUana is not what it 
was : in many places it seems dying out in 
placo of flourishing and running over fresh 
waste ground ; then Spanish noedle, in many dis- 
tricts -'it'h a post for long years, ia almost 
a tiling of the paBt j and, we suppose, " white 
wood " ia not what it was 1 All this reminds us 
of tho story told by Dr. Donald Fraaor when hero 
the other day: we were reminding him of nil ministry 
iu lnvornosa where wo often hoard him preach a 
generation ago, and he referred to au old older 
of tho High Church there, who way elwaya bo- 
