33° 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [October i, 1881. 
more correct term — so with coffee : the reason of the 
malady from which it has suffered for some 10 years 
is not far to seek. In the first place, the tre> s which 
now cover so many thousands of acres in Ceylon are 
the direct descendants of plants, grown from seed 
imported by the Dutch some 150 years ago. This 
leads us to an apparent paradox. The breeding-in- 
and-in of all animals tends to degeneration, and 
doubtless this law applies to the vegetable kingdom 
as well. The laws of nature cannot be wrong, where 
her surroundings are nature's self. For instance, the 
little honeybird instinctively carries the seeds of 
parasites from tree to tree ; these obtain a hold and 
eventually flourish on the remains of the tree whose 
death has been their life. Man comes and clears his 
land. He plants his vineyards and h'S orange groves, 
but he cannot leave all to nature. If his object be 
to gather into his garner grapes and oranges, he must 
keep down all parasiiic growth, while encouraging 
his trees to grow as naturally as possible. Why 
does nature permit of parasites at all ? Perhaps it 
may be for this very reason : as a preventitive of 
in-breeding ; for it is seldom, if ever, that a parasite- 
vegetable — of course, we know about big fleas and 
their attachments— adheres to another parasite ; and 
we know that it is only plants of the same 
germs that fertilize one another. But if we are 
to grow our trees naturally, and at the same 
time suppress any extraneous efforts of nature (which 
we may almost term, having regard to the unnatural 
isolation of distinct genera of trees, extra-natural 
or exiraordinary), we must be cautious in no way 
to hinder the natural flow of sap, which should be 
as carefully attended to as the opening of sluices of 
an unsafe dam when the burst of the monsoon is 
imminent, especially if a town may be inundated 
by the bursting of such embankment. The gist < f 
all which is tbat Coffea Arabica should never bave 
been topped or pruned. Shutting the stable door 
when the "kuthirei" has bolted ! Mistake-finding is 
the simplest of simple matters!! Allowing that the 
mistake has been committed, is there no remedy ? 
Here is the chance of a remedy, Try it ! Allow 
your trees to throw up one healthy stem sucker 
from as near the top as possible. In course of time 
nature, will assert herself, and draw all the sap fro u 
your poor old hacked and worn out wood to this 
new tree. Let that tree grow. If you must prune, 
do so; only let that work consist simply of the 
removal of dead wood. Naturally your tree will not 
throw out cross wood. It is your topping, and 
pruning, carried on so carefully for year*, that cause 
your coffee to throw out three cross or centripetal 
branches for every handsome centrifugal one. 
Then there 's your weeding. Carbonic acid is es- 
sential to the growth of all plants. The simplest 
way of obtaining a plentiful supply of this gas for your 
coffee is to hack down your weeds and let them rot. 
There are many young places where it is not too 
late to give this rational and most economic system 
a trial. If from contagion estates cannot be kept 
free of Htmeleia, its effects will most certainly be 
mitigated by the above treatment. — Faithfully yours, 
POST TENEBRAS LUX. 
[Has the treatment not had a trial and without suc- 
cess? Are we not told by men who have tried 
both systems that heavy pruning and liberal manur- 
ing is the only way to fight leaf-disease?— Ed.] 
Cure for Tapk Worm.— If M. H. H. G. will take 
of Kousso (Brayera anthelmintica) half a drachm, 
made into a ball with fat, ami give it to the dog fasting, 
it will remove the worm. The dose should be follow- 
ed by a purgative in two hours. The worm should 
be examined for the head, which is the emallest part, 
and if not found, the medicine should be repeated after 
an interval of three or four days. — L. K. C. P, — Field. 
NATIVE-MADE IRON IN INDIA AND CEYLON : 
HOW TO IMPROVE AND EXTEND THIS 
INDUSTRY. 
From an interesting article in the Pioneer on 
"Charcoal Iron in India " we take the following ex- 
tracts of practical purport to us in Ceylon. Iron ore of 
very pure quality is to be iound very freely in certain 
Ceylon districts, and there is no reason why a good de*l 
more should not be done to establish a regular and 
profitable industry : — 
Every savage living in countries containing the ore 
(except the Americans) knows how to make excellent 
iron. From pure oxides, such as occur in many 
countries, iron can be extracted so readily, that it could 
hardly mis* being accidentally discoveied by a savage 
who had lighted a fire and made use of pieces of the 
ore as hot stones to boil his dinner. Iu India we 
find the aboriginal populations everywhere expert in 
the manufacture of iron. In Kumauu. and the hills 
generally this work is left to th^ Dums ; and in West 
Bengal and Chota Nagpur to the Aghurias, who, 
from their ugly features and their babit of working 
at night over the glowing furnaces, are said to have 
been the prototypes of the ghouls and ogres of fable. 
The methods of making Iron in India have been 
often described by officers of the Geological Survey 
and others. A small clay furnace from 18 inches to 
three feet high is used, and the fire in it is constantly 
blown by pairs of bellows, of various construction, 
working alternately and sending the air in by separate 
pipes or tuyeres. Per haps the commonest kind is the 
ordinary goatskin bellows, two of which are worked by a 
man sitting between them. Charcoal is first, filled into 
the furnace and then lighted and blown till it forms a 
glowing, nearly white hot mass; when alternate lay- 
ers of finely broken ore and charcoal are placed on 
the top until as much as can be conveniently worked 
in the furnace has been added. An opening is made 
for the slag, or molten oxide combined with tbe 
impurities of the ore and fuel, to run out ; and then 
a lump of soft spongy iron mixed with slag is re- 
moved and instantly welded into a compact mass. 
The wbo'e process la?ts about six hours. The iron thus 
obtained is of the softest aDd toughest description, equal, 
for making horse-nails and such purposes, to the best 
Swedish. The great dra"back to the process is that it 
is so wasteful both in the matter of ore and fuel. We 
learn something about the amount of this waste from 
a sort of inter-provincial report on the native methods 
of making iron in this country, and on the prospects 
of the trade in competition with the cheaper 
Engli-h made iron. The paper is circulated by 
the Bengal Government ; it was printed at the 
North- Western Provinces Government Press ; and 
though it bears no name either at head or foot, 
internal evidence shows that it was probably writ- 
ten by an officer of the Punjab Forest Department. 
It therefore deserves to be called inter-provinciaL 
It seems that, on the average, only about one-tbird 
of the total iron in the ore is extracted by the 
native process, tbe other two-thirds being lostintVe 
slag; and to make a pound of iron, about 131b. of 
charcoal are required. In the round-about process of 
making smithy iron employed in England (formation 
of pig-iron, puddling, rolling puddled bars, piling, re- 
heating, and rolling again) only about 20 per cent of 
the iron is lost, and the total expenditure of coal or 
coke — much cheaper kinds of fuel than charcoal— is 
only about lSlb. for a pound of iron. But for the 
superior quality of the native iron, the industry would 
doubtless, for this reason have been swamped long ago 
by the cheap supplies obtainable from England. Another 
objection to the na'ive process is that only the very 
purest ores, carefully v ashed and sorted by band, can 
be employed, because if inferior ore were employed, 
it would be impossible to exclude the earthy matter 
