576 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [January 2, 1882. 
NEW PRODUCTS : LOWCOUNTRY REPORT. 
liberian copfee; cocoa; ceara' rubber; 
ceickets ; leaf-disease ; talipots ; 
palms in flower. 
Western Province, 4th Nov. 1881. 
October has maintained the character of 1881 as the 
most perfect for the lowcoimtry planter that he could 
have made, had he himself been clerk of the weather. 
It has rained almost daily, and, towards the end of 
the month there were several heavy thunder storms. 
I huve planted up the piece of new clearing aud 
have since been supplying the vacancies caused by 
the crickets in the July and August planting. The 
havoc has extended to a very large percentage of the 
young plants, and it is a question now if I have 
sufficient plants to fill all the empty spaces immedi- 
ately. The crickets have not entirely disappeared up 
to date, but they are less mischievous than they were 
up to the middle of the month, and I can now put 
out plants with some confidence. I have now ac- 
cepted the cricket as a fact of the situation, to be 
provided for by larger nurseries, letting the plants 
be more advanced before putting them out, and 
planting just at the time when the enemy disappears 
for three months. The plants put down now will 
have three months to establish themselves and gain 
strength, before the next generation are ready to 
take th9 field. That Liberian coffee is to be got up 
in this batali land at all is due to the one fact, 
that the crickets do not attack the young plants in 
baskets to any serious extent. 
The year old plants continue to grow in the most 
satisfactory way and the older trees are elaborating 
a heavy blossom, which will open towards the end 
of this, or early next month. 
I sowed the Ceara rubber seed in a shed, and the 
first of it came up on the fifth day and was six 
inches high in a fortnight. The shed, I find, ia a 
mistake, as the plants all lean towards the light, at an 
angle of 45 with the surface, I have therefore put down 
the second supply of seed in the open ground. I have 
already lost several plants, not by cricket, which only 
works at night — these were cut at midday — but probably 
by a species of fly ; but I did not see it. 
Much of the cacao that appeared dying some months 
ago has taken a start, and now grows tolerably, 
but shows a tendency to throw the growth into suckers 
from the stem, which I am trying hard to counteract, 
by stripping and pruning. I have recently supplied the 
vacancies on the ground, where the older plants looked 
most promising, and, in planting, have used a good 
deal of quicklime for the benefit, of the whiteauts : 
time will try its effects. The older trees continue 
to flower copiously, but have never yet formed apod. 
The teak, bambu, jak. mango, beli, -ire all flour- 
ishing in a very satisfactory manner ; only the cin- 
chona is a complete failure. The lime and orange 
do very well after they get a foot high, but out of 
muny hundred plants I have not half-a-dozen fully 
established. 
I lost one coffee plant, about three feet high, from a 
white grub, about an inch and a half long, which entered 
below ground, and ate its way up the centre of the 
stem, and some dozen young plants have lost their 
tops, from a small brown grub that enters a few 
joint i below the top and eats out the pith upwards. 
< bhe leaf-disease happens on the older trees, 
it never leaves them : some get spots on every leaf, 
but neither drop leaves nor crop; while others, on which 
the look is not so bad, have a bare beggarly appear- 
ance, with the fruit remaining, but never growing 
bigger Sum. of the year old plants get a very vir- 
ulent attack, and, for some time past, I have stumped 
all that 1 lound ho affected : but 1 find them very 
slow in throwing out fresh shoots and, at the end of tw« 
months, some of them have not made the attempt. 
I suppose every one who has bad to deal with 
Liberian coffee during three or four years pa«t has 
been forced to accept the fact, that ujiwards of twelve 
months elapses between the flower and the ripe fruit. 
If the fruit sets on a healthy tree, it will ripen in 
its season, and those who are not content with the 
nature of the plant will do well not to meddh with 
its cultivation. If the crop dries on the tree, before 
ripening, it indicates a bad plant, or a poor soil, 
or a specially bad season, but not an incapacity in 
the plant to ripen its fruit in a climate that closely 
resembles that of its habitat. If well treated throughout 
and planted in good soil, the Liberian coffee plant 
will flower at two years from seed, and may or may 
not, according to the season, continue to blofsoin 
every month for the next twelve, but its true 
blossoming seasons are Januaiy and July. When the 
tree has a .crop it will not grow much young 
wood, while bringing forward its fruit, and the 
next blossom will be a comparative small one. 
Thus there will be two crops in the year, and 
one of them will be larger than the other. If 
the season is a moist one, the strength of the tree- 
will go into the production of wood; if it is dry the 
wood will ripen sooner, and there will probably be 
several small blossoms in the intervals of the larger 
ones. It is claimed that the plant bears crop on 
the old bare wood, but I would not put much trust 
in what crop may be so obained. I have no trees 
more than four years old, so that my experience is 
not very extensive, but 1 see clearly that the struggl- 
ing blossom on young trees will cease, and they will 
settle down into bi-annual flowering, in ordinary sea- 
sons, in this portion of the iowcountry. 
Colombo residents who have never seen the most 
stupendous flowering apparatus in nature should take the 
opportunity, which half-a-life time in the island may not 
again bring round. The talipots are dn flower, all 
over the Siyane and Hapitigam Korales. There is 
one close to the Government garden at Heuaratgoda, 
and they are to be seen along the railway as far as 
Ambepussa. I can see above twenty from the top 
of this estate, and they are still more numerous about 
Muguragampola. Perhaps some botanical authority will 
explain why they all flower together. 
" KEGELIA PINNATA." 
In your notice of the fruit of this plant brought to Cey- 
lon from Java by Mr. A.M. Ferguson, you forgot to men- 
tion that it was a case of bringing coals to Newcastle. 
There is a fine specimen of this tree in the garden- 
behind the public offices in the Fort, close to the 
end of the Government Printing Office, which is al- 
ways in flower and fruit, the latter hanging on stalks 
often 8 to 10 feet in length, and in this respect, being 
one of the most remarkable plants in the vegetable king- 
dom. I saw a fine specimen of this tree in the 
triangular bit of ground opposite the main entrance 
to the Royal Botanic Garc'ens at Peradeniya forty 
years ago, and even then it was conspicuous from the 
Kandy roadside by its singular flowers and fruits, 
the latter hanging down ou long rope-like peduncles,, 
but so concealed otherwise by a mahogany tree, the 
so-called star-apple of the Peradeniya Gardens, but 
really the Chrysopliyllwn olioaeforme, with a small 
elongated fruit, and other trees, that Dr. Tuwaites 
did not notice it until I pointed it out to him about 25 
to 30 years ago. The tree has been freely distributed 
from this one by Mr. Thwaites, but our Colombo 
one would have shared the fate of other rare or valu- 
able foreign trees in the Fort garden which were said to- 
hnpede the free circulation of air, had I not on more 
