THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [September i, 1881 
To the Editor of the Ceylon Observer. 
CASUARINA CULTIVATION 
Maturata, August 1st, 1881. 
Dear Sir, — In your issue of the 30th of July, 1 
notice a paragraph on the cultivation of casuarina 
and the profits to be gained thereby. Could you 
kindly inform me : firstly, where the seed could be 
procured ; secondly,' what makes the casuarina give 
such a good return ? In fact, in what does its 
value consist ? 
The above-mentioned paragraph states that common 
waste land is good enough for the purpose. Would 
a paddy field suit ? I should be glad to hear your 
opinion, as I am interested in the cultivation of all 
new products. —Yours, INQUIRER. 
TEA CULTIVATION. 
1st August. 
Dear Sir, — " Young Tea" (if his plants are Assam 
hybrids) would do well to take off everything grow- 
ing close to the ground, to at least six inches above 
the surface ; remove all suckers ; top the plants down 
to 2' 6" or 2' 9' ; and clear out the centre round 
the stem something in. the same way as in coffee. 
This will insure a strong growth laterally, but no 
picking of flushes should be attempted until there are 
from six to seven buds on each shoot, i.e. that each 
shoot would be about 7 or 8 inches in length. I am 
not certain what month the cold season is due at 
Lemastota, but pruning should only take place in the 
cold weather when little or no wood is being formed. 
—Yours faithfully, SWADDY. 
PLANTING AND COFFEE PROSPECTS IN 
JAMAICA. 
Botanical Department, Gordon Town, Jamaica, 
21st June 1881. 
Dear Sie, — I beg to send you by this mail a copy 
of our recently issued Handbook of Jamaica, which 
I send your worthy coadjutor and yourself as a memento 
from the Far West. 
Since my arrival here I have been nearly overwhelmed 
with work, in a great measure arrears of former 
times when the department had no chief. 
I nevertheless follow events in Ceylon with great in- 
terest, and read the Observer as a record of efforts of in- 
dustry and energy which, perhaps, no other part of the 
world can shew. I sincerely wish you every success. 
In reply to a question received a short time ago, 
I am happy to say we have no prevalent and wide- 
spread disease affecting our coffee estates, which in 
spite of the late hurricane, are promising most abund- 
ant crop<!. Dr. Cooke's remarks could not possibly 
apply to Jamaicn, and he was evidently misinformed as 
to the exsteuce of disease on our estates. — I am, 
very faithfully yours, D. MORRIS. 
[We copy Mr. Morris's suggestions for the im- 
provement of the coffee indusiry in Jamaica into 
the Tropical Agriculturist. — Ed.] 
" C. URITUSINGA" IN UPPER HEWAHETA. 
Mooloya, Deltota, August 1st, 1881. 
Dear Sir. — I have just received from my brother, 
Mr. J. F. Deane-Drake, who is at present at home, 
the enclosed, which is a copy of a letter he received 
from Messrs. Howard & Sons. The bark here re- 
ferred io was a email sample taken from four trees (S£ 
years old) which are growing on this estate. There 
are, I should say, from 20 to 30 trees of the same 
Species and age at present growing here, and I have 
been lucky enough to secure over two pounds of ripe 
seed from them in the last three months. Should you 
care for the analysis, I shall be glad to forward it to 
you on its arrival from England. I may add that these 
trees are growing in a rather poor dry sub-soil, and 
were last year manured wiih cattle manure. 
One tree which I measured was I' 10"iu circumfer- 
ence at the surface of the ground : four ieet from the 
surface it was 1-1£ in circumference, and its height 
would be about 22 feet. — Yours faithfully, 
C. F. DEANE-DRAKE. 
{Copy.) Stratford, London F., 28th June, 1881. 
Dear Sir, — With reference to our interview yester- 
day, our Mr. J. E. Howard, F.R.S., called here this 
morning, and the sample you left us has been identilied 
by him as C. Uritusiuga, probably grown in rather a 
dry soil for this variety. We propose submitting a 
portion of your sample to a chemical analysis and on 
completion of the same we shall have the pleasure of com- 
municating with you again. Thinking they will prob- 
ably be of interest, we have sent you by this post 
samples of the Dutch Government barks just arrived 
from Java viz., C. officinalis, variety Uritusinga, &c. 
Calisaya, Ledgeriana. You will at once notice in the 
former tiie singularly close resemblance to j our sample. 
— We are, dear sir, yours truly, 
To Deane Drake, Esq. (Sd.) Howard & Son*. 
[The C. Uritusinga of Howard, original Loxa bark, is 
now more generally spoken of as the Condmninea variety 
of crown barks: renewed bark of this kiud has sold as 
high as 10s per lb., so that the Mooloya seed from 
trees eight years old ought to be valuable.— Ed.] 
SHORT CROPS DUE TO POOR CULTIVATION. 
July 31st, 1881. 
Sir, — I agree with your correspondents who hold 
that crops which are short this year are due, not 
so much to season or elevation, since there are so 
many instances where a line of coffee separates, on 
the one, 10 cwt. per acre from nothing per acre, 
on the other. 
It would, surely, be a very extraordinary thing 
if a line which was not a mountain ridge could so in- 
fluence as to separate the season on its either side ! 
'Ihe fact is, that wherever coffee was cheaply worked 
bast year, there the crop is bad : let this cheap 
course be repeated, and next year the crop will be 
woi-se. 
In most instances, wherever coffee was highly cul- 
tivated, especially in manuring, there the crop is 
very good. Where manure failed, the wood was too 
late and unmatured. This wood is now ready, but 
unfortunately this is not the blossoming season. 
No improvement, but the reverse, unless they 
change hands, can be hoped for from estates too 
involved to afford manure. 
Very much prominence is given to the Kelebokka 
valley this year, where some places which have 
always been highly kept up are doing just tolerably well. 
But the crops there ennnot hold a candle to some in 
Dimbula, and, after two such very short seasons, 
would have, three years ago, caused more grumblings 
than congratulations. 
Is there not an error in the statement "that the 
crops from average estates there amounted to as much 
during the last five as during the five previous years " ? 
There was, it is true, a very heavy crop from every es- 
tate' in the dry season of 187C-77, the surplus of 
which, by spreading it over succeeding seasons, helped 
to uphold the average, but its influence for such a 
purpose was expended some time ago, and if the- 
average for five years, ending with the coming crop, 
were placed beside that of the five previous years, 
it would compare most unfavorably. With a generous 
expenditure upon manure, Kelebokka will, however,, 
hold its own beside most other districts in the country. 
TRAMP. 
