258 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
[Oct. 1, 1900. 
great thinking men, ti'ong on statistics, — 
springs on the nation the gratifying news 
that there are still 18U,UU0,()()0,0U0 tons of coal 
in the mines of Britain, and that, at the 
{)resent rate of consumption, the supply will 
ast 500 years. That news has pleased me 
not a little : 50U years' supply will last my 
time, and, as posterity has never done any- 
thing for me, it can look after itself for all 
. that I care. In the meantime the vision of 
(,,myself and family, during the coming winter, 
seated round the place where a hre should 
have been, has been dispelled. 
We have had a terribly trying time for 
HAY-MAKING ; 
for weeks the rain has rained everyday, and 
it has only been by fits and starts th;it the 
hay crop has been secured. It is an excep- 
tionally good crop, however, and, as every- 
thing else, has been benefitted by the I'ain, 
we have no cause of complaint. I have had 
to endure much worse than this, when, in 
i the middle of crop on the old coffee estate, 
; the monsoon broke, and the rain poured 
,! down for weeks on end. The coolies, shiver- 
• ;ing with the cold, could scarcely pick the 
pcuam, which dropped and was washed 
down the drains. But when the season came 
to a close, and the estimate had beeu more 
than secured, the miserable time of picking 
was forgotten, and the warm rays of the sun 
dispelled from the minds o-f the coolies the 
recollection of the cold, wet and shivering 
season they had lately endured. 
The abundance of grass has raised the 
price of 
STORE STOCK 
considerably, and the first of the lamb sales 
has gone off with a rise of from 5s to 
8s a head on last year's prices. Let tea 
planters try to imagine what this means to 
grazers, by comparing these prices with the 
prices of their own staple. Supposing that 
a tea crop had sold, last year, at an average 
of 8d per lb., the planter would, no doubt, 
have been greatly pleased ; but, supposing 
that the war in China, or some other cause 
had raised the price of the same crop to Is 
per lb. this year, a princely fortune would 
appear tobe dawning on the proprietor. Such 
then has been the experience of the sheep 
farmer this year. 
The cry out about 
FINGER-AND-TOE DISEASE. 
in turnips, which is usually heard at this 
season of the year, is ringing over the whole 
land, but the wallers never seem to think 
that they are themselves responsible for this 
most terrible disease. Perhaps, in the course 
of another generation, farmers will have 
learned to avoid, as they would the plague, 
manuring, with superphosphate, their tur- 
nip break, and will have given up that most 
deadly style of cropping known as the 
" five course shift." My land, which lies in 
grass for eight or nine years, has no sipfn 
of canker now. Indeed, I never saw a liner 
crop of turnips than that which I have this 
year, here or anywhere else. My next 
neighbour, who has followed my lead, told 
me the other day, that he has a field in 
turnips, this year, which had lain in grass 
for seven years, and he never had finer 
and sounder roots in his life. Another of 
bia fields, however, which had only been in 
grass for three years, is now rotten from 
top to bottom. It takes a long time to 
drive a new idea into a f:iriner's head, 
but it gets there in course of time, and I 
hope yet to see this example bearing 
good fruit. — " Cosmopolite.'" 
TWO MAHOGANY LOGS FETCH £1,536. 
Two logs of African mahoganv were sold 
for the unprecedented amount of £1,536 the 
otherday at the auction sale of Messrs. Edward 
Chaloner and Co., at Liverpool. These logs 
formed one tree, and were Ijought to l)e cut 
into veneers to decorate the palatial residences 
of certain American merchant iirinces. The 
veneers are used in place of wall-papers, and, 
being beautifully figured, give a superb effect. 
The prices realised for the two logs were 
respectively JOs 3d and 7s 3d per suiierficial 
foot.— Daily Express, Aug. 27. 
"CEYLON HANDBOOK AND DIRECTORY." 
A new edition of this work has been in 
hand for some months baek and a great deal 
of preliminary work has ))een done. The 
circular of estates and other Directory 
information was issued last month : and 
we invite suggestions from friends and 
others interested as to "improvements,"— 
"what to leave out of the bulky volume," and 
as to anything that is still wanted We have 
already received several communications 
on the subject, and we are bound to say 
they chiefly embody requests for "-///ore." 
We have promised in fact to try and give 
each plantation's Telegraph .as well as Post 
station ; to show at a glance, the estates 
belonging to the several Limited Companies, 
or big individual proprietors ; to give 
a list of all Grant-in-Aid and Priv.'VTE 
Roads (always provided in these cases that the 
planters concerned are ready to co-operate). 
These are but a few of the "planting" hn- 
provements. In the bulk of the book there 
will be considerable changes, and although 
we are hoping to compress the volume a 
good deal (in regard to Agricultural inform- 
ation and Trade Statistics, etc.) we do not think 
anything specially required for reference 
will be omitted, while much that is new 
and useful will be found, added in. But 
to seciu'e a really useful Book of Reference 
and Directory, there must be co-operation 
all round and every proprietor or manager 
should see that a return is filled up for 
his estate and sent in as per the tsupple- 
ment issued last month while, as usual, 
we feel sure the Mercantile atid Trading 
community of Colombo will do all that is 
required. From officials -heads of depart- 
ments especially,— we always receive, and 
are sure still to receive, all the help we can 
require to mate a volume which is in uni- 
versal request as correct and cora])lete as 
possible. 
The Annual Crop of MnsHROOiis in Fiance 
is valued a* £400,000, and there are 60 w.'iole- 
sale firms in Paris rlealin;? exclusively in them. 
In the Department of the Seine, it appears, there 
are some .3,000 eaves iu whieli mushrooms are 
grown, and about ,300 persons are employed in 
heir CMMme.— Home paper . 
