June i, 1881.] 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
2 5 
is by no means a wild estimate ; with good soil to 
start -with, and skilful treatment in the mean time. 
Cacao. 
I bave heard of such wonderful estimates of the 
profits of cacao cultivation, framed by those who are 
just beginning in the low-lands of the Western Pro- 
vince, that I think a slight sketch of my own three 
years' experience may be of service to them. I may 
introduce myself as a planter of over forly years 
standing, with a wide and varied experience ; but 
when I began cacao I knew no more of the 
habits of the plant than I had casually picked 
up from newspapers, and other publications, to 
which I had given no particular study : I had, 
therefore, almost a clean sheet to take my notes on. 
It is just three years since I sowed my first seed, 
in bambu cylinders, filled with the best soil I could 
command. Most of them grew, and they were planted 
out, on land that had been trenched, rooted, and pre- 
pared for Liberian coffee nurseries, with the larger 
trees left as shade. Here they grew till the best 
plants were four feet high, and were getting their 
branches, when a belt that separated them from the 
clearing was cut down, and within a few days not a 
leaf remained on any of them. Some of them still 
live, and struggle to send out shoots from the stem, 
but the wind always defeats their efforts. The next 
batch of plants were put out, alternately with Liberian 
coffee, on land with a very easy incline to the west, 
the soil being a loose gravel, with much organic mat- 
ter. This lot got on tolerably till the south-west 
monsoon opened, when they went the way of their 
elders. Those that remain alive are making a strong 
effort, but will no doubt be finished off by the wind, 
when it comes round to the S.W. Of course I have given 
up all attempts to establish a cacao field on that land. 
On this place, I introduced 500 well-grown plants, 
in bambus, in July 1879, and before the end of that 
year not one in ten was left alive. They encount- 
ered three months of dry weather ; they were cut by 
lizards and crickets ; insects riddled the leaves ; white 
ants cut the taproots, just below the surface ; the 
wind stripped them ; and now at the end of 21 months 
I have not 25 of the 500 odd remaining. In Nov- 
ember 1879 I sowed the whole field at stake, and 
surrounded each plant with a basketwork cylinder 
from 15 to 18 inches high. On the portion of the 
clearing that faces the S. W. the whole of them died 
out within four months, and three-fourths of those on 
the eastern side followed. At the end of May, last 
year, I put down seed at all the failures, but dry 
weather set in immediately afterwards, and they never 
even germinated. Finally I put down nearly 10,000 
seeds in baskets in September and October, one- fourth 
of which were cut by lizards and crickets, almost 
as soon as they came up, and above 1,000 were cut 
the very first night after planting in the field. At 
the end of November last year the whole clearing was 
fully planted. Now, in April, one half of the spaces 
are vacancies. The number of plants for the place is 
is about. 8,000. I have, first and last, used 25,000 seeds, 
and I have still upwards of 4,000 vacancies. My con- 
clusion is, that, of all the plants I ever have had to 
deal with, the cacao is the most delicate, and has 
in this climate the most enemies. I by no means 
say that the evils to be encountered in getting up a field 
of cacao, in this climate, are insurmountable, for I have 
one field of ten acres, in which I have not at the 
end of five months absolutely lo9t ten per cent of my 
plants. I do not know whether cacao will, when more 
advanced, be able to resist the prevailing wind, mi 
situations exposed to it, but, so far as my experienco 
goes, it inclines me to the negative side of the ques- 
tion. In every situation that I have had to deal 
with, the young plant needs temporary shelter, but, 
so far as I have been enabled to observe, it is not 
benefited by overhead shade, except when very young. 
I certainly have seen benefit from placing a jungle 
branch with the leaves on, over the basket shield in 
hot weather. This plant does not take kindly to a soil 
where sand or gravel are the prevailing ingredients ; an 
alluvial flat, or a deep clayey loam, seems to suit it best. 
White ants, I had always believed, touched no living 
plant, and it was only after obtaining the clearest 
evidence I admitted that the young cacao plant was 
an exception to the rule. It is ower tine a tale that 
they have destroyed tens of thousands in the low- 
country, and will destroy hundreds of thousands 
more before all the projected plantations are complete. 
I do not know whether the gentleman who recom- 
mended steeped aloe leaves was in earnest. The 
aloe is by no means a common plant in Ceylon, and is 
a very slow grower, and nothing can be clearer 
than the utter impracticability of the, plan where 
there is not an aloe plant within ten miles, or a 
drop of water to be found on the surface of 100 
acres. As to the other enemies of this plant, the 
lizards and crickets breed most freely in a loose dry 
soil, and do not much affect clays, gravels, heavy 
loams, &c. There is no doubt that allowing the 
weeds to take and keep possession of the soil would 
moderate the ravages of both crickets and lizards 
on the cultivated plants, by affording them a wider 
field of choice, but it is an unsettled question, 
whether the gain in one direction might not be 
balanced by a loss in another ; so far as coffee is 
concerned, there is no question about the action of 
weeds. For myself, as the father of monthly hand- 
weeding on coffee estates, I will not be the man to 
make the experiment of burying young cacao plants 
in dirt, in the hope of benefiting them thereby. 
Seed must now come rapidly down in price, with so 
many trees coming into bearing at so many points 
of the country, and there will be little difficulty 
in maintaining nurseries at a moderate cost, to supply 
vacancies as they occur. 
As to the minor insect enemies, I have observed about 
half-a-dozen species of caterpillar feed on the leaves, 
and several species of minute beetles ; then a small 
species of black ants bring the spawn of the white bug 
and establish it on the tender shoots of a thriving plant, 
but it generally succeeds in dismissing its unwelcome 
guest in a few days. Besides all those reptiles and insect 
foes, there is a large percentage of failure, for which 
I am still unable to account ; a plant of eight or 
ten inches suddenly ceases to grow, and sometimes 
remains for months, not dead, but sickly, and then 
suddenly dies off. On examination, there is no sign of 
insect action, either on root or stem. If this is an 
effect of dry weather, then why are other less ad- 
vanced plants not affected in the same way ? I have 
had an ample opportunity this season of studying the 
effects of drought on the young coffee plants : all that 
were planted in the same kind of soil, and had grown 
equally, showed the same day the same signal of distress 
on the same day, but cacao shows no such uni- 
formity of constitution ; a plant that has been cut 
when very small will fight to establish a fresh stem, 
through the whole dry season, and probably with success; 
while its next neighbour, that has met with no check, 
has been growing freely till it is above a foot high, 
suddenly drops its leaves ; sometimes renewing its 
growth when rain falls, but mo v e frequently going 
off altogether, even after the advent of rain. I would 
be glad to learn whether this is common in the ex- 
perience of other cacao planters, or if it is a special 
dispensation, affecting the soil and climate which I 
have to deal with only. The largest plant I have 
found the white ants dispose of was three feet high, 
but I have had cases of sudden death, of plants 
quite as advanced, for which there was no apparent 
cause. One plant that some time ago I remarked as 
a specially thriving one I found this morning with 
