June i, 1882.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
087 
have poverty of soil and hemileia as well, or grub 1 
and the disease combined, that our efforts to put 
crop on the trees are baffled. The latter you have 
in the older districts ; the former in the younger and 
unexhausl ed soils'. Wait, till you sec what Maskeliya 
will yet do. For some years I had fine paying crops 1 
on one of my places. Two years ago I gathered 7,000 
bushels of parchment ;the following year I got 1,500 
only. Am 1 to believe that the fungus was the cause 
of this sudden falling-off ? Certainly not. Had it been 
the cause, it would have been marked by a yearly 
diminution instead of the sudden falling-ofl _ \ 
That was an instructive letter by our good friend ol 
Mattakelly ; but one is forcibly reminded of Dr. 
Camming and his prediction about the world's com- 
ing to an end at a date he fixed: and yet he took 
a lease of his house afterwards for 10 years sub- 
sequent to that date. 
if Mr. Smith is such a non-believer in hybridization, 
why was he so very careful that no cinchona oth c than 
Ledger should flower near his fine Ledgers ? His con- 
fidence in nature's laws, as he professes to understand 
bhem, cannot amount to much. 
Even were I not a humble follower of the late 
Mr. Darwin, I think it can scarcely be doubted that 
cinchona has this power strongly developed. 
Four lines of soven year old succirubra trees run 
parallel from one end of the estate to the other about 
300 yards apart; intersecting these and about the same 
distance apart are two Hues of officinalis. There are 
thus eight points at which iJie lines cross. From 
under the trees at these points thousands of plants 
have been put out, quite one-third of which have 
turned out a nice-looking hybrid. The plants are 
from the seed dropped at the intersected points only ; 
and yet my good friend of Mattakely pronounces 
them to bo a tine type of l'ata de Uallinazo. 
The plants, when quite, young can scarcely be recog- 
nized from officinalis, but the hybrid between t at and 
succirubra soon becomes apparent, f have offered to 
shew him thousands of the young plants growing on.y 
at these points I mention, but he declines to be con- 
vinced. Let him put that in his pipe and smoke it. 
—Yours truly, JAMES SINCLAIR. 
NEW PRODIN 
Udugai 
Sir., — Enclosed you will 
1SS2. 
>f what 
>d mat- 
Ceylon 
may bo a useful new product for Ceylon 
erials for new brooms would be very usefr 
just uow). The Piasava fibre is quoted from £20 to X40 
per ton, and, from the account of the size of the tree, 
might, 1 should think, he planted about 24 feet apart. 
At a yield of 20 lb. of tibie per tree, this would t'ive 
about 1, 600 lb. of fibre per acre, and selling say at L3o., 
or £30 a ton would e.ive R195 per acre. What the 
cost of production is 1 cannot say, but, a- il is not 
likely to be more than R100 an acre, it looks us if it 
might be a profitable cultivation. 
[ wonder sago has never been cultivated in Ceylon, 
for there is any quantity of land admirably suited for 
it. In the Straits they evidently think it a paying 
product, as I hear from Mr. Bailey that be iB to 
plant up 400 leres for a company at Job ore. 
Liberiau coffee, cocoa, nutmegs and all low country 
produets are growing splendidly at Jobore, and they 
cannot well help grow iug m stieh a soil a J situation an 
1 saw at Mr. Bailey's place at I'iiinrning — I remain, 
yours faithfully, T. S. D0$R£E 
compelled to submit to a svstem hn objects to, hut that 
in the local market he will always find buyers ready 
to pay the equivalent of the L mdon epiotations. 
The local market offers all the advantages " Planter" 
asks for. He may sell at any time he likee ; In- does 
away with not one but two middlemen, and, above all, 
importance for all other ar'icles : why should cinnamon 
planters adhere to the old system, the defects which 
do not lie in the quarterly sales but in the habit of con- 
signing ?— I am, sir, yours faithfully, MERCHANT. 
II, o normal 
conditions c 
extraordfn ir 
thus de 
, health 
improvements, which 
tea plantations 
the immigrants 
better aceommo> 
cenerallv raised 
it labourers in Assam 
i of "slavery" which a 
painted in such vivid 
nistration Report for 
vth-rate among these 
which is considered 
population ; and the 
led : — "Food has been 
i been good, and the 
every year being made on 
iter-supply, the housing of 
families, the provision of 
he sick, and the like, have 
• s standard of comfort in a 
to guard t h 
and formed 
Royal Mothe; 
the Emperor 
while a peach 
in China is, according to the 
Id, credited with many virtues - , 
:s interesting information, thus : — 
two brothers, named respectively 
who had power over disembodied 
ghostly legious in review beneath 
having bound ull those who work- 
inkind with scarlet withes, threw 
gers. In memory of this it was 
als on the last day of the year to 
i peach-wood mounted upon rteds, 
likeness of a tiger upon the door- 
i. Ai present, adds Mr. Mayers, 
wo brothers are pasted on the en- 
hinese houses on New-year's eve, 
elling from harm. Peaches, too, 
Chinese fairy-tales and mythology, 
of the banque! prepared by the 
he West when she paid a visit to 
g, better known as Shih Huang Ti; 
in was the scene of one of the most 
THE TRADE IN < IXXAMuX. 
Colombo, 5th May. 
Sin,— Your correspondent "Planter" finds hull with 
the quarterly sab s of cinnamon in the Londi u mark) t, 
and with the aversion of London brokers to any change. 
Allow me to point out that " Planter" is in no way 
celebrate, l events in Chinese history, when the Oath of 
Brotherhood was taken between the three heroes who 
played so important a part in the historical romance 
of the Three Kingdoms. There are many other in- 
teresting details connected with the peach-tree in 
Chinese literature, but we have no space to enlarge 
upon them. Some pundits aver that, properly speak- 
ing, the peach is an emblem, not of longevity, but 
of death ; while Western theorists have attempted to 
connect it with the treu of the knowledge of j,ood 
and evil, whose fair fruit presented so f itul a tempt- 
ation to our mother Eve It see lis, however, certain 
that, according to am- out wri:<T- p peaches wen- not 
admissible in sacrifice : that those with double kir- 
uel < were a mysterious but unfailing P0MQU;an<J that 
th ■ premature fructification of one speoivs ol peach- 
treo was a harbinger ol national calamity. All this 
n.av be vry interesting, bnti' is not p ictic.il. Wo 
wiJ conclude wit'i two fact* which have the merit 
of being both. The best manuro for p<\.e i- ro •. *Q. 
cording to Ohineee hortioultii i» snow i and a cold 
decoctmn of pig's-hcad, pour. I about the roots aud 
int" the trunk itself, is a»u • romody for the insects 
which prey upon it. 
