754 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [May i, 1889. 
great hardship in this proposition, seeing that men 
have for years past very ungallantly pocketed 
vast profits from tea and yet all this time marri- 
age has assuredly been going slowly more and more 
"out of fashion"! Let these profits out of tea go 
in future to the ladies, and who can tell in how 
short a space of time the prospects of the marri- 
age market may not become improved ? What article 
of commerce so well suits women to administer 
as tea? It is, in this respect, without an e^ual. 
The demand for tea is ever on the increase, the 
supply never fails, but is always augmenting, and 
prices have now got down to so low a level that 
losses in the retailing of tea would seem wellnigh 
impossible. Fashion in tea changes not : 
unless tea is absolutely unmerchantable, a cus- 
tomer for every ounce of it can eventually be 
found, as we poor tea planters know to our cost. 
One can hardly suppose that, seeing they are the 
principal drinkers of it, women would be as guilty 
as men have been in foisting off worthless rubbish 
on their sisters. But in the struggle for "bawbees" 
perhaps there would not be a pin to choose 
between some of them in this respect I I might 
comment on the anomaly of men administering 
ladies' dress departments. Anyway we men would 
consider it an anomaly if the ladies were to take 
up our tailors' r&le ! but I would not attempt to 
interfere here or the ladies will all be up in arms 
foK my daring to interfere with their rights ! ! ! 
Well let the fiat go forth, after the " Ladies' 
Tea Bose League" has been floated, and let the 
women of England for ever afterwards carry out 
their determination never again to buy tea ex- 
cept from women, and the boycotting of the 
men will be complete ! Victory would speedily be 
proclaimed all along the line and (well ! surely 
not 1) the men would, or rather could, not dare to 
complain. Women of all classes of the community 
would be enrolled. Unless women administered 
the tea departments in the Army and Navy 
and other large household stores, women would at 
once cease to buy their teas there. The same 
down to the smallest shops in old England ; 
and women of every degree would be free to enter 
upon the business without let or hindrance. Their 
success would be assured from the moment that 
their millions of sisters carried out their re- 
solve to purchase tea only from women. If only 
to si-cure the fortunes thus made, men wouid soon 
be found bowing the knee, as of old, to women ! 
This is how I would solve the above question 
put by your London correspondent "Penelope." 
MIND YOU MY SUGGESTION EEFEBS 
ONLY TO TEA. 
Honors (of various grades) a la " Primrose Lea- 
gue," would of course be annually distributed by 
the annually installed Worshipful Mistresses to the 
most deserving dames and spinsters. Secrecy, fortu- 
nately, not being required ; my scheme could be 
safely worked on Freemasonry lines as regards 
its organization and ramifications. Women dealing 
in tea would be free to buy it wherever they liked 
and of any quality (or absence of it) as best 
suited to their particular circle of customers ; there 
would be no interference here. But in time no 
doubt we should witness a revolution even in this, 
for why should not special " tea trade mark brands 
of the League " be eventually established, the 
names becoming just as much " household words " 
as Epps, Fry and Ca<Jbury for couoa, Huntley, Palmer 
& Co. for biscuits, or even greater examples still 
Bass, Allsopp and Guinness? The retailing of tea 
in a loose state will soon be oonfined to those 
who cannot afford to buy even the smallest leaden 
packet ; thus the trade will become in everyway 
more and more suitable to women. The time is 
ripe for the change, 
AND HALF-MEASUBES WOULD BE 
SIMPLY FATAL. 
SALE OF ESTATES. 
Wilton estate, Eelani Valley, the property of Mr. 
A. J. Thackwell, has been sold, we are told, to a 
native for B17,000, while according to our Directory, 
the property covers 145 acres of which 100 are 
planted and plucking is going on over 80 acres we 
believe. The advertisement stated a total of 183 
acres and 80 planted. Thi3 is an extraordinary 
bargain and the more strange because we heard 
that there would be brisk competition on the auction 
day. It has been sold though by private arrange- 
ment ; although specially advertised for sale on the 
11th at 2-30 p.m., nothing being said about " unless 
sold privately." Now, gentlemen who have in- 
spected the property calculating on an auction sale 
will have cause to complain if not a claim for 
expenses ? 
Another sale is of Chertsey estate in Kelani Valley 
by Mr. Boss-Wright to Mr. Fyler : this is a small 
place of 55 acres, 50 planted. 
Ittaliadde estate, the property of the late Mr. 
Luke F. Kelly, was put up, says the Kandy corres- 
pondent of a contemporary, for sale at Queen's 
Hotel, Kandy, last Saturday, at 1 p. m., by Messrs, 
Jansen & Co. The estate is 1£ miles from the 
town of Matale, and it is said to be well adapted 
for tea, tobacco or cocoa cultivation, and is 60 
acres in extent. There were two gentlemen com- 
peting at the sale. Mr. A. M. Hurst's bids ranged 
from B1,000 to B2,150, and Mr. J. H. Barber's from 
E1.000 to B2,500. The estate was finally bought 
in by the administrator, Mr. L. H. Kelly, after Mr. 
Barber's bid. Mr. F. A. Prins, the administrator's 
lawyer, was also present during the sale. 
4 
HOW TO PUSH CEYLON TEA. 
Every little effort helps. No suggestion tending 
to promote a demand for British-grown teas should 
be despised. And accordingly we would direct 
attention to one possible means of moving a certain 
considerable section of good people in the old 
country to give up entirely patronising China tea, in 
favour of the Ceylon or Indian article. When last 
in England, in the interests of our cinchona 
planters we addressed the editor of the Friend of 
China — the organ of the Anti-Opium Society whijii 
has Sir Joseph Pease at its head — a long letter 
which he was good enough to publish, demon- 
strating that the best possible means of checking 
the craving for opium in large districts of the 
Celestial Empire, as of the drinking of laudanum 
in the low flat malarious Fen districts of England, 
would be to promote the distribution of quinine 
whioh had fallen to a price that might enable 
philanthropists to distribute it among thousands if 
not millions of poor people. 
Our present appeal to the good friends who raise 
a big cry every year in England, over the opium 
iniquity, would be on different grounds, and it is 
an appeal in fact that might be supported, if not 
forwarded, with practical effect by our Planters' Asso- 
ciation. Perhaps some of our readers may have 
heard how in the days of the great anti-Slavery 
agitation, sixty years ago or so, — in many homes 
in England, slave-grown sugar was forbidden to be 
used and the greatest care was taken, even at 
enhanced prices, to buy only sugar grown through 
free labour. That was one means adopted by earnest 
opponents of slavery to try and check its' influ- 
