Nov. 1, 1900.] 
THE TEOPICaL 
AGRinULTURIST. 
347- 
TEA MANUFACTURE IN BAD WITHERING 
WEATHER. 
In reply to a l eterenee ive made to Mr. A Cooke 
of the Cliota Nagpore Tea Company re cei tain 
experiments made by him in tea mauiifacture 
that gentleman sends in the following, which will 
be of interest to our tea planting readers :— The ex- 
periment you read in niy note had notliing to do 
witli green tea. The experiment referred to (I 
think) was rolling healed leaf after it had got the 
proper colour — tliis improves the twist, without 
spoiling the liquor much. In bad weather, when 
witliering is impossible or imperfect, I have always 
rolled theleaf and allowed it to get the proper copper 
colour for black tea ; then, instead of tiring the 
leaf fully, I warm it and get it flaccid, and then 
give a final roll ; after which it is fully fired and 
dried. 
This improves the appearance wonderfully with- 
out doing any harm to the liquoi. Good black 
tea cannot be made in this way, but the inter- 
mediate firing saves the appearance. Unwithered 
leaf makes awful looking tea, all chips and ragged 
bits, and the liquor cannot be really good, but the 
above plan will give a fairly good appearance and 
no worse liquor. 
During the wet days of the late cyclone I had 
leaf three days old and still Icutcha, and had to 
roll it anyhow, or it would be in to smell bad. I 
rolled twice, twenty minutes each time, very 
lightly within a period of three heurs and the leaf 
pot a good bright colour. It was then heated and 
rolled again. Comparing the wet leaf in the 
.sample cup with some ordinary tea made from well 
withered leaf, I found that the coppery colour 
was brighter, and deeper in the withered leaf and 
the liquor was much darker. The plan I wrote of 
does not obviate withering, but it minimises the 
loss from under-withering.— /wc/iau Gardening 
and Planting, Oct. 11. 
" PLANT SANITATION." 
MR. J. B. CARRUTHERS' LECTURE. 
-r»i, 
Mr. Carruthers was called upon by the Chairman^ 
Mr. E Webb, at the commencement of the meeting 
of the Northern Districts Planteis' Associationon 
Saturday afternoon to deliver his lecture on 
"iPlant Sanitation" with special reference to 
cacao canker. 
The lecturer commenced by saying that sanita- 
tion was recognised in human medicine and with 
animals, but was nob yet recognised with regard 
to plants. People recognised that dead bodies 
should not be left lying about and othar such rules 
and he wished to impress on them the necessity of 
observing the sanie rules as applied to plants. 
Plant diseases, he said, could be grouped into ihi i O 
or four groups. First, diseases due to environment, 
i.e., due to want of moisture, or excass of moi-tive 
and due to too high or too low a temperatue. Tllc^a 
were neither contagious nor intectious. Tlicre 
were diseases caused by 1 irge animals as well as 
insects, such as the damage done by squirrels, 
helopeltis, red spider, etc. Those were subjects 
really looked after by his colleague, Mr. Green, and 
bethought he should not say anything about them. 
There was a more important disease in view of 
plant sanitation due to the i ax of fungi and bac- 
teria and it was in these they had to try and use 
sanitary measures as they were nearly all conta- 
gious or infectious to describe what fungus is. The 
lecturer took as the best instance the mushroom 
consisting of the spawn or mycleiivm below 
the erouud and the portion above the ground 
known as the mushroom carrying the spores of 
the fungus which is the reproductive part. Spores 
may be considered as the seeds of the fungus. 
The mushroom was easy to see with the naked 
eye, but unfortunately tlie fungi which grow on 
cultivated plants were not so easy to recognise. 
The lecturer then went on to say that fungi were 
divided into two groups, viz, Parasitic and 
Suprophytic. Suprophi/tic fungi grow only on 
dead organic matter and were not so interesting 
to the practical man as they did no damage to 
cultivated plants. The Parasitic fungi were most 
important to cultivators as they caused much 
damage and were fatal to cultivated plants. He 
then went on to say that of the Parasitic fungi 
one that interested them most was the cacao 
canker wliich he explained to the meer.ing by 
means of pictures. With cacao canker as in other 
tungi when the planter first observed it and wrote 
to him (the lecturer) or any other such worker 
saying that the disease had. just broken out, it had 
probably been in the tissues of the plant tor 
months or perhaps years. The way the planter 
generally noticed it was by the production of the 
fruits of the fungus, but that only meant that the 
fungus had been in the bark a long time before 
producing its spores just as a Howering plant 
grew some time before producing its fruit. It was 
very important for planters to learn to recognise 
this in their earliest stages. The cacao canker 
could be recognised in its earliest stages by the dis- 
coloration of the bark And cambrium. The colours 
were different, from a yellowish tint to dark claret 
colour. This discoloration was due to the pre- 
sence in the tissues of the spawn or mycelium of 
the tungus nectria. His experience had shewn 
him that when this spawn had been in the tissues 
for some varying time from ten days to a year, 
the spores were produced and they were to be 
noticed as whitish with yellow or pink tint masses 
coming through the bark. The lecturer then 
shewed pictures of the canker. Inside those masses 
were found, if magnified with a microscope, spores 
of two kiiids, and those spores, if they lighted on 
any other cacao tree, and in the presence of mois- 
ture, would cause a second patch of canker. The 
only thing necessary for the germination of those 
spores were heat and moisture. There was always 
suthcient heat in Ceylon, and during a good 
many months of the year there was sufficient 
moisture. The first spore was more or less egg- 
shaped and the size could best be understood by 
saying that a layer of five millions covered a 
ten-cent piece. Almost simultaneously, or a little 
later, there were formed a larger spore crescent- 
shaped, having five divisions, 
He then explained how the spores began to grow 
in presence of moisture. After those white 
masses had been formed, a careful observer would 
see some minute red bodies forced through the 
white masses but that did not occur until the 
portion of the cacao tree was dead. Those red 
bodies, each about the size of a pin's head, were 
seen in clusters containing another form of the 
fungus. On opening one of the red bodies he 
said there would be found a number of transparent 
bags or sacks, each containing eight spores, 
technically called asco spores ; while the spores 
previously mentioned were called gonodia spores. 
The asco spores were fitted to carry the fungus 
