April 1, 1901.] THE TEOPICAL AGKICULTUKIST. 
697 
be made. As this does not seem to agree 
with Mr. Sinclair's statement, might I ask 
the favour of your advice on the matter, as 
I am anxious to know the right course to 
pursue ? Thanking you in anticipation of 
your reply,— I am, dear sir, yours faitfully, 
JOHN F. WILMAN. 
[We have no hesitation in saying that, in his 
justifiahle desire to show the importance of 
greater attention to factory work than has, 
perhaps, hitlierto, been generally shown in 
Ceylon,— Mr. .Tames Sinclair went too far in 
minimising the importance of careful work 
in the field, and more especially in the care- 
ful plucking of leaf. For, we suppose, it 
will be generally admitted that good and 
fine teas cannot be made by the most care- 
ful attention in the factory, if coarse imsuit- 
able leaf only is supplied? Careful plucking, 
careful withering (for which plenty of room 
is indispensable) and careful manufacture 
generally, all undoubtedly go to the turn- 
ing out of the best tea any particular 
plantation is capable of ; but we see Mr. 
Mann, the scientific expert for the North 
Indian planters, declaring that "quality" 
IS most likely to be improved by suitable 
manures.— Ed. T.A.] 
PEPPER GROWING ON THE ANAI- 
MALAIS. 
Pollachi, March 17. 
Dear Sib, — I see in your March number 
of '• T.A." that a correspondent of tlie Madras 
Mail, writing about these hills — the Anai- 
malais— says he believes the elevation is too 
great for pepper to do well at. Can you or 
any of your experienced readers give me an 
opinion on this, contirming or refuting the 
suggestion, as 1 am now arranging to put 
down several thousand cuttings ? 
In my experience in Mysore at this eleva- 
tion, 3,000—3,500, with the same class of 
forest, but with twice the rainfall (300 inches), 
the plant gre^o well and sturdily, fruiting 
well for a few years and then becoming sub- 
ject to a blight which materially reduced 
crops,— too mucli wet perhaps.— Yours faith- 
fully, "ANAIMALAIS." 
[We have never heard of pepper- growing 
above 2,500 feet in Ceylon, while the most 
successful culture in the time of %e Dutcli 
was quite in the lowcountry, indeed, at 
Madampe and Kalutara near the seashore and 
in the Kegalla and Matara districts a few hun- 
dred feet above the sea level. Still, Ur. 
Thwaites and his successors have cultivated 
pepper successfully at the Peradeniya Gardens 
near Kandy, say 1,600 feet elevation ; but 
we should doubt very much the pepper 
vine fruiting successfully at 3,00u feet 
or over in Ceylon, and the chance should be 
less farther north on the Anaimalais or in 
■Mysore ?— Ed. T. A.] 
A BIG PYTHON, 
Kalutara South, March 21. 
Dear Sir, — I send you measurements below 
Of a Rock Snake ( in Sinhalese, *'Pimbura") 
caught yesterday and afterwards killed : 
Length while in its natural state 9;V feet 
Circumference ... ... 15J inches 
Stretched out and in motion ... 174 feet 
Circumference ... ... 12 inches 
Has this ever been beaten ? W. A. L. 
[Tennent in his " Natural History " says 
of the Python : — One that was brought to 
me tied in this way measured seventeen feet 
with a proportionate thickness : but one 
more fully grown, which crossed my path 
on a coffee estate on the Peacock Mountain 
at Pussellawa, considerably exceeded these 
dimensions. Another which I watched in the 
garden at Elie House, near Colombo, sur- 
prised me by the ease with which it erected 
itself almost perpendicularly in order to 
scale a wall upwards of ten feet high." 
—Ed. T.A.] 
BIG PYTHONS. 
Galle Face Hotel, Colombo, March 25. 
Dear Sib, — A coi-respondent in today's 
issue of the Observer, while giving the dimen- 
sions of a python killed in Kalutara 
South, asks : — "Has this ever been beaten?" 
Some years ago, when a party of planters 
in the Kahitara district were hunting for 
red deer, they missed one of their beagles, 
and, on searcliing for him, found him en- 
veloped in the folds of a python. Tlie animal 
was shot; and on lieing measured found to 
be 22 feet long and 22 inches in circum- 
ference. I had these figures from tw.o of 
the gentlemen who were present. Natives 
have got an exaggerated idea of the size 
to which pythons grow, as the following 
story sliows :— A party of honagr-hunters 
rested to cook their afternoon meal and 
finding a log convenient sat down upon it, 
placing two stones to form a fire-place, 
the log forming the third support. When 
the meal was nearly cooked, a queer 
motion was observed in the log, and on 
examining it closely lo ! it was a python. 
Needless to say the party did not stay to 
partake of that meal. 
W. J. 
[Are both stories equally reliable?! — Ed. 7". J.,] 
Enormous Toffee Caego.— The arrival in tlie 
port of New York of the Lamport & Holt's 
Lina steamer "Rossetti" with a cargo of 126,000 
bijsjs coft'ee from the port of Santos is quite pigni- 
ficant as marking a new era in the coffee-carrying 
trade. The Lamport & Holt's l^ine is the oldest es- 
tablished line of steamers in the coffee-carrying 
business from Brazil to the United States, and 
this line owns an enormous quantity of tonnage. 
Going back some twenty, year,s it was considered 
quite an event to get a cargo of coffee from Santos 
in excess of a total of 10,000 bags or from Kio of 
about 30,000 bagSj and in the old days of the Balti- 
more clippers it was quite a circumstance to liave 
a whole cargo of 12,030 or 15,0(J0 bags of coffee 
come in here belonging to one firm. The enormous 
jump during the interval can be understood when 
we look at the cargo by the " Rossetti " of which 
nearly 75,000 bags belong to one house in New 
York, representing a total value of about $750,000, 
—JB'fO Netvs, Feb. 5. 
