554 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [December i, 1881. 
COFFEE CULTIVATION AND MANURING. 
No. I. 
Kotmale, 28th Oct. 1881. 
Dear Sir,— The figures you append in your foot- 
note to my letter of the 6th only convince me of the 
absolute inutility of promiscuous manuring, and show 
at a glance that coffee was not kept up by manures 
to any appreciable extent ; contrariwise rather. I note 
that 224,000 cwt. manures came upcountry in 1874, 
and that the crop of the following season, that end- 
ing 30fch Sept., 1875, was the largest ever gathered, 
that in fact which most nearly approached the round 
million, viz., 968,694 cwt. In the j ears under notice 
the young districts were mostly just being planted, 
and thousands of acres of coffee there contributed 
to the crop of 1877-78, which, notwithstanding that 
estates had all the advantages derivable from 548,000 
cwt. manures sent up from Colombo only reached 
a total of 620,292 cwt. I hope I may be disap- 
pointed of my fears. Certainly just now everything 
is coulmr de rose. Even here it is possible to get a 
whole bushel picking now and again. Should this 
promising state of affairs continue, and the crop of 
1881-82 equal or exceed that of last season, then, 
sir, we must; conclude that all the treatment coffee 
requires is to be let alone, or, at least, to be not so 
hacked about and cut up with knife, mamoty and 
fork, as in past years. That planters, as a body, do 
not anticipate such luck as non-decreasing crops, 
their general thick-planting of cinchonas in the coffee 
adequately proves ; and your papers of next year will, 
in such happy event as suggested, bristle with letters 
on the question of which to stick to, which to abandon. 
Perhaps that old judgment of Solomon may settle 
the matter. 
Mr. Hollo way's experiments are of great interest. 
Perhaps his soil is somewhat better (more soil-y) and 
his climate less unsuitable, where such good results 
are obtained. Would Mr. Holloway guarantee such 
good returns as Maria and Eriagastenne give him 
from any young estate, say in Dimbula or Dikoya, 
given thaf he had the charge of such estate, and full 
discretion allowed him in that position ? 
As for Mr. Sinclair's perpetual petty-manuring 
scheme, as he says, the cost is enough to prevent its 
general adoption on trial. The first proposition of 
the axiom he adduces (in the last paragraph but 
one of his letter) is a most fallacious one for promis- 
cuous manurers as it stands. I would amend it thus : 
"if it be remunerative to cultivate (i.e. to grow coffee) 
without manure, then ivith manure," containing those 
coffee plant foods in which the soil is more or less 
deficient, " it will be more so." — " Manure" is a vague 
term. — Your statistical croaker, 
POST TENEBRAS LUX. 
[We need only remark : there are not a few old 
coffee estates in the country which have uniformly 
year by year, with scarcely an exception, even to the 
present time, given a paying return, and this is at- 
tributed simply to judicious systematic ' manuring. ' 
It is an 'axiom' with not a few agents and pro- 
prietors now, "no manure; no crop" — (that is, crop 
to cover expenditure). That manuring of recent 
years doeb not give the same results as in olden 
times, and also that a great deal of money is often 
wasted in manure, may be very true, but that does 
not affect the general question of the value, nay, 
the necessity for liberal cultivation in the present 
day. — Ed.] 
No. II. 
Langdale, Lindula, 27th Oct. 1881. 
Dear Sir, — While fully agreeing with Mr. Sinclair, 
that coffee can, as a rule, only be made to pay now- 
n-days by means of manure, and that those interested 
have much risk of ruining their properties, if they 
do not apply it, I must join issue with him on hU 
statement that " this was one of the most favourable 
blossoming seasons we could have wished for." I take 
it for granted that, like myself, he is referring mainly 
to Dimbula. If so. facts are stubborn things. I chal- 
lenge him to deny any of those I now beg to lay 
before you. 
As a rule, the blossom bursts in Dimbula and 
Kotmale some two days earlier than in Lindula and 
the Agras. On one of our early blossoms, Dimbula 
and Kotmale had a good show all round, and a little 
later the rain came just when it waB wanted to set 
the blossom. In Lindula and the Agras, it fell the 
day the blossom burst, and ruined the bulk of it. 
Another blossom set well on Carlabeck, but not on 
Langdale, nor lower down the valley, simply because 
Carlabeck, being nearer the ridge dividing us from 
Uva, got rain just in the nick of time, while it did 
not fall on Langdale, nor lower down. / nother blos- 
som set well on Langdale and Carlabeck, but not much 
lower down, as rain fell on the upper places where 
needed, and did not fall much lower down. 
These facts are inexplicable on the theory that the 
season was good, and the fault lies only in" the want 
of manure. In the first case, many unmanured places, 
but otherwise in good heart, set the blossom better 
than on manured places farther up. In the second, 
the better manured estates of the two named did not 
set its blossoms as well as the other which got the 
rain. In the third case, with much the same rainfall, 
on all healthy coffee the blossom set much the same 
on both places, but I have no doubt the manured 
coffee will stand its crop best.— Yours faithfully, 
E. HEELIS. 
28th October 1881. 
Dear Sir, — There is nothing like muck, and were our 
soil in that much-to-be desired condition where a heavier 
outlay need not be incurred by frequent applications 
of infinitesimal doses than by manuring once a year 
with the ordinary dose, one would be prepared to admit 
there was something to be done. Coffee estates were, 
however, unfortunately cast in a different mould to 
flower gardens, and the excessive cost would there- 
fore alone be sufficient to condemn the whole theory, 
even if labor were so abundantly plentiful as to enable 
one to manure the whole of an estate once a fortnight. 
Experiments on the bungalow field or some such 
favored spot are most unreliable. I neither believe in 
nor advocate the present low diet our seedy friend 
is being subjected to, as if to test how little he can 
pull through on, but one must cut his coat accord- 
ing to his cloth, Where manuring can be indulged 
in, let it be done rationally and as economically as 
possible, and all such clever, expensive experiments 
left to those who can afford them. We have got so 
accustomed to bad seasons that we can listen quite 
resignedly to a thunderstorm on the top of our best 
blossom, and before crop is over even forget all about 
it! What is a worn-out eslate? "One with surface 
soil all washed away."— Q. E. D. ! This is also some- 
thing new, but don't you believe it, for there are 
many estates in some of the older districts with as 
fertile subsoil a couple of feet below the surface as 
many estates higher up ever had on it. — Yours truly, 
SCEPTIC. 
COFFEE LEAF-DISEASE. 
Dear Sir, — May I, through the medium of your 
columns, ask Mr. Marshall Ward if he has ever suc- 
ceeded in producing Htmileia vastatrix by the contact 
of a diseased leaf with a perfedly healthy plant? 
Also, if the disease ivas so propagated, if the healthy 
