THE TROPICAL 
AGKICULTUEiST. [May 1, 1900. 
the steiling fellow he Is, he lets the public 
into the good thing — " there's inillioiis in it " — 
and the shares are snnpped up by all aiKl 
snndry, even to the fnrniers ot this remote 
corner of Scotland and scrip is in every man's 
packet. Then comes tlie calls, even to the 
hundred and tenth, and tiie shareholders fiie 
up to the bankruptcy court, and there is an 
end of it. Ah! how many promishig affairs 
such as these have turned out like the 
baseless fabric of a dream and left hut the 
scrip laehind. In this age the terrible desii'e 
to get on has become gcieral. Poverty is 
dreaded, riches are worshipped, so that 
farmers even have taken to dabbling in 
shares and other speculative transactions , 
because they know too well that fortmies 
iiive rarely made at their own legitimate 
profession. I do not know that large for- 
tunes have ever been made in f;irming ; if 
they have, the process must have been slow 
and gradual. Unfortunately, it only hapjjens 
about once in seven years that a good season 
is accompanied by good prices for farming 
produce, but that year gives the farmer a 
food lift to tide over the two or three mid- 
ling years and, at least, one pretty bad one 
which generally follows, so that the utmost 
benefit a farmer derives from a fat year is 
that he can hold his own against the lean 
years which follow. But the pleasure of a 
farmer's life weighs against these untoward 
circumstances, and it is couifoiting to know 
that money made by legitimate farming, 
must be made honestly and no one is 
deceived or loses by his neighbour's 
success : whereas in commercial deal- 
ings, one man's gain is another man's 
loss. There is an old saying : — "Shoe- 
maker, stick to you* last," and I would 
recommend my brother farmers to stick to 
the slow process of accumulating wealth by 
farming, and not attempt to gain a rapid 
fortune by dabbling in shares. I know the 
game well, and saw plenty of it in Aus- 
tralia ; so the prospectuses which I receive 
. daily, by the post, go to the back of the grate 
in my house. 
CEYLON TEA PLANTATION COM- 
PANIES : 
WONDERFUL RESULTS FROM LIBERAL CULTI- 
VATION IN THE BASE OP THE PITAKANDB 
COMPANY. 
v!i,-.:.:5 <;-: 
Elsewhere we give the Reports of three local 
Plantation Companies ; but two of them, we 
may briefly dismiss, remarking that we trust 
there are better days very near at hand for 
the Agra Tea Company with its fine pro- 
perty when a much niore satisfactory divi- 
dend will be declared. The case is very 
different with the Drayton Company, which 
pays a magnificent 15 ptJji* cent and holds a very 
strong position with its fine compact Dim- 
bula estates,— estates too, that can scarcely be 
said to have lost jnuch of their prist^pe 
vigour duing the coffee era. 
But now we come to a very different 
group of properties, in those appertaining to 
the Fitakande Company (which also payg 
its shareholders 15 percent); for, the Pitakande 
and Damliooiagalla estates must have l)een 
first pla)ited in coffee by Mr. R. B. Tytler not 
later than IS 1142 ; while Sylvakande and 
Kinrara are also among our very oldest 
coffee plantations. In 1878, for instance, when 
colfee had reachtd its maxinmm, this group 
of Matale estates is returned in our Dii-ectory 
for almost ex ictly the same acreage of coffee 
as is now under tea. Here is how the group 
stood in 1878 :— 
Pitakanrle . . 300 acres coffee up to 37 years old, 
Daniboolgalla ... »X) ,, „ „ 
Sylvakande . . ,, 34 
itinrara .. 203 , ,, 
Total 1,141 acres coffee. 
And the Pitakande report gives 
acres of tea on land, which has nearly all 
been in continuous cultivation from 50 to 
60 ye irs ! It is, of course, when we 
take the results in crop that surprise 
and satisfaction may be felt; for, Mr. Fraser 
has brought his average yield up to 128 lb. 
per acre, with a maxinmm of 1,0251b. 
Surely no such result has ever been 
achieved before on land so long in cultiva- 
tion and it is all due to judicious manuring, 
the effect of which Mi'. Fraser demonstrates 
to be cumulative. When tea is turned out 
at a cost of less than 23 cents per lb., or 
without manuring at 18'40 cents, while the 
nett return is over 36 cents, we need not 
speak of success — it is self-evident ; and verily 
the working of the Pitakande Company 
affords an object lesson of a very attractive 
character to all tea cultivators ; for, apart 
from the age of the estates, it must be re- 
membered that the elevation— 1,500 to 3,000 
feet above sea-level — of the properties does not 
justify any expectation of more than ordi- 
nary teas. 
♦ 
The Uses of Tea Seed Oil.— Tea seed oil is 
regularly used in Hongkong and the Southern 
parts of China as an illuminating oil. It will not, 
however, b«rn in a cold climate. W« have in 
former issues, says the Indian Planters' Gazette, 
pointed out the many uses to which tea seed oil 
may be i)ut. When tea seed becomes a veritable 
drug in the market, — and the day does not appear 
so very far distant,— planters may turn their atten- 
tion to expressing the oil, and find a profitable 
market by so doing. We are aware that one or 
two planters tried experiments with tea seed oil, 
but they were on such a small scale that for 
commercial purposes they were valueless, and 
afforded no criterion to go by. An old skipper who 
has had considerable experience in the China seas, 
irrforms us that in the China trade, tea seed oil 
was looked upon as the best vegetable oil for pre- 
serving wood, owing to its possessing great pene- 
trating power on dry wood ; and that if it is put 
on fairly thick on the underwater side of a ship's 
wooden deck exposed to the hot sun, it comes to 
the surface in a few hours and materially adds to 
the hardness of the deck and to its life. The 
penetrating properties of tea seed 'oil on wood are 
superior to the ordinary bright varnish or pine 
oil in common use for preserving wood in Europe, 
and, like coconut oil, it possesses the peculiar pro- 
perty of shrinkage. 
