6o8 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [January z, 1882. 
about half what they used to do, we shall find the 
savings have been made more or less on the following 
items: superintendence, contingencies, roads and drains, 
cleaning up ravines and making composts, crop ex- 
penses owing to the shortness of production, and last 
of all by stopping manuring and economizing iu all it- 
lateral branches, such as the keeping of stock, pi mt- 
ing up grass fields &c, and it is on this head par- 
ticularly that the real results have been obtained. 
To recapitulate: as I am of opinion that eventually 
we shall have to alter somewhat our present system 
of working our coffee estates, I will mention the 
following causes as likely to bring this about: poss- 
ible fall in prices, the necessity for judicious eco- 
nomy, the want of credit compared to other times, 
the urgent need for following Mr. Ward's suggestions 
regarding leaf-disease, and the scarcity of work for 
a large supply of labour, and the scarcity of labour 
for a large crop. 
By adopting the foregoing plan, we might expect 
to make some headway against leaf-disease, recuper- 
ate our estates, and dispense with some of our 
labour. We should certainly be concentrating our 
manure, our money and our energies, and may be 
adopting a plan economical and suitable for the new 
order of things. — I remain, yours faithfully, 
JOHN HAMILTON. 
HOW TO GERMINATE AND GROW 
LEDGERIANA SEED. 
Agrapatana, 29th Nov. 1881. 
Dear Sir, — Now that the valuable pill-boxes of 
Ledgeriana seed are being sent to nearly every coffee 
estate in Ceylon, where the climate is at all suitable 
to the cultivation of the richest species of the cin- 
chona family, I think it desirable that planters, who 
have already made Ledgeriana nurseries, should pub- 
lish the reeults of their experience for the benefit of 
those now about to form them for the first time. 
Those who have been successful would do good 
service by telling us by wha f . method that success 
was obtained, while those who have wholly or partially 
failed might help equally by indicating the causes 
to which they attribute their failure. I venture to 
set the ball rolling, hoping that others will not be 
wanting to kick it along. 
Failure as well as success has not been wanting in 
my own experience of nurseries, but 1 flatter myself 
that, taught by experience, the next Ledgeriana nursery 
I attempt will turn out a real good one. 
I have planted Ledger seed in pure jungle soil, 
just as it came from the juugle. I have also used 
jungle soil after having thoroughly destroyed all the 
germs of poochie life by heating it well on a flat 
tin over a fierce fire. I have tried surface soil and . 
river sand in equal proportions. I have used flower- 
pots, chatties, and wooden boxes to sow the seed in. 
I have tried beds made on the flat and on the slope, 
with roofs over them, of thatch, talipots and shingles, 
the latter in one case with window- frames taken 
bodily uut of the bungalow and let into the roof. 
My seeds have been sown an inch apart in re- 
gular rows, and also broadcast and thickly ; they 
have been watered by absorption through porous 
chatties, and by spray. 
When the small seedlings have refused to come on, 
but seemed inclined to remain for ever in statu quo, 
with their single pair of little leaves, they have been 
treated with tepid water, with soap-6uds, with a weak 
solution of liquid cattle manure. 
I have also tried placing manure deep down, a foot 
under the bed, to warm them, and draw the roots 
down in the same way that the window-frame above 
would keep their heads straight up. 
The result of all this is that, I think, the best 
site for a nursery is one with an eastern aspect. 
The land should be gently sloping, the beds should 
be well raised and should be made of jungle soil, 
and river sand mixed in equal parts; the jungle soil 
having been scraped from the surface, then well lifted 
and thoroughly baked. No manure of any kind to be- 
added. 
The roofs to be thick mana-grass thatch fastened 
securely on large hurdles which can be attached to 
the posts of the nursery by temporary fasti-Dings, and, 
when the s-ed has well germinated, these roofs can be 
lifted bodily off during the early morning and again 
in the evening. The seedlings will grow stout and 
hardy and will neiiher be sappy nor be leaning all 
on one side. 
Sow the seed pretly thickly : seedlings seem to grow 
better at first close together, and to support one an- 
other. Perhaps this may be my fancy, but, if you sow 
the seed far apart, the nursery will alwn\s look thin, 
wretched and disappointing. I began with Ledgers 
two inches and more apart, and have been getting 
closer ever since. 
Keep the nursery very dark and moist till all the 
seeds have germinated, and then gradually accustom 
them to much light and little water. If the weather is 
cold and wet, the water used may be just warmed. 
These simple instructions will do well for a cinchona 
nursery, but a rough nursery of this kind is fit only 
for ordinary calisaya, succirubra,' and officinalis, of 
which the seed is plentiful and the seedlings are hardy. 
It is a remarkable fact that the young seedlings of 
officinalis should be so hardy and the maturer plant 
so delicate and difficult to grow. 
Ledgeriana is just the reverse. It requires great care 
to get real Ledgeriana seed to germinate, and more 
difficult still to get the small seedlings to come on. 
But once established, and the delicate period of in- 
fancy once past, no cinchona is more hardy or grows 
faster. Much disappointed at some of my Ledger 
nurseries having taken loDg to germinate and having 
stuck fast as seedlings, I wrote to a friend in Boga- 
wantalawa, who had been among the very first in 
Ceylon to raise a quantity of Ledgers successfully, 
and told him of my anxiety. He reassured me by 
telling me that I could not have a better sign of I he 
purity of my seed. I therefore took patience, and many 
of these seedlings are now turning into fine plants. 
The common calisayas grow like weeds from the 
beginning. 
On the largest private plantation in Java, Soeka- 
wanna, where more than four hundred acres of young 
Ledgers of the purest strain are growing magnificently, 
tbey economize their seed by planting every grain 
under glass. If they take these precautions in the 
Preanger, surely we in Ceylon, where the seed is so 
scarce and so valuable, may well do likewise. This 
is what the head inspector or visiting agent of Soeka- 
wanna, Mr. Von Wenning, writes to me on the sub- 
ject, or, to speak more accurately, a free translation of 
what he writes : — 
" My experience leads me also to think that the 
species Ledgeriana presents a great contrast to the- 
species officinalis. 
"The latter germinates easily and grows apace while 
yet a seedling in the nurserie-, but no sooner out in 
the open clearing than tne delicacy of its constitution 
manifests itself and its growth and development 
are slower than the growth and development of any 
other kind of cinchona. 
"A Ledger seed, however, germinates ODly under 
favorable circumstances and requires fostering care as 
a seedling, but once over the critical period of its 
infancy, it becomes a robust tree of rapid and vigor- 
ous growth. 
"This difference in the constitution of the two 
species has been impressed the more strongly on my 
mind, inasmuch as during the last three months my 
