54 
tHE TROPICAL AGKICULTUtllST. July 1, 1B98. 
other fruit trees, and for the soil as well, until it ii 
now giowu in large qaantilies. There is noihiu{< yet 
discovercil that is, all in all, so valuable a crop as 
this for farnmrs to rai^c. It beius an air plant, it 
will do wi.ll in most any kind of soil, in any of ihe 
States, north or south, that will grow corn, and 
no fertilising is necessary. The forage— the foliage 
and vino— coming from tliis bean is a marvel and 
a wonder. Planting iu rows 4 feet apart will produce 
a solid mass of vine and foliigc, up to your waist 
in height, covering the ground completely, and yield- 
ing leaf, vine, and fruit, aggregating four to fiva tons 
to ihe acre, and of dry beans twenty to thirty 
bushels. Besides the vine being a valuable fertiliser, 
forage, mulch, and shade, the question will be asked, 
" la it also prolific in fruit?" The answer is "Yes, 
emphatically so." From the hill the vines run out 
in all directions like the water-melon, 10 ft. to 
20 ft. It commences to fruit at the hill in 
clusters like tlio raisin-grape thence aloi g _ the 
entire lent;th of ths vines at intervals of 10 iu to 
20 in. pods in clusters of from two to twenty appear. 
Therefore the fruitage must be immense. For twenty 
years this bean hiis had a home in Florida, and has 
been known among the people as " the climber." In 
good rich soil it will climb 50 ft. to 60 ft., blooming 
and fiuiting all the way up,— a most beautiful and 
lovely sight to look upon. To drill an acie will take 
sixteen quarts of seed; to plant an acre in rows 4 ft. 
apart each way, about twelve quarts. In good soil 
this acre will produce four to live tons of green forage, 
and fifteen to seventeen hundred pounds of beans. 
I speak from practical knowledge, as I have recently 
harvested nineteen acres of as fine a crop as ever grew. 
Plant seed in spring the same time as you do corn, 
and cultivate and treat in same way, until vine 
begins to fill the row, then lay by for the season. 
When bean is ripe in the fall pick it, then turn mass 
of dry leaf and vine under for fertiliser, and from 
this your soil is immensely benefitted. It is a good 
idea to drill or plant corn right in with bean seed 
as a partial support to vino, to keep pods off the 
e^ound. You can turn stock into bi an field if you 
wish or cut vines up at bill and carry out to stock, 
latter being advisable. If planted in orange grove 
or orchard, keep 5 ft or more away from trees, as 
vine is a rampant grower and climber, and will 
cause you bother. Experience has shown that it 
is better to drill than to plant in hills, as by 
drilling you get a better stand on the ground, 
and that is important. The beans ground up, 
hulls and all, make a fine fertiliser of pine-apples, 
orange, and other fruit trees, as well as for all 
vegetable growth. Stock of all kinds like it, as well 
as the green fornge early in the season, and all do 
specially well on it. Every living thing on the farm 
will eat the green forage and dry bean with greedi- 
ness. The dry bean is also fit for table use. The 
question is often asked if this newcomer — the Florida 
velvet bean— will do well in any other section of 
our country except Florida. I answer by saying 
there is no earthly rea<!on why it will not, as it is 
not tropical, and will do well wherever corn will 
grow. After having made a thorough test of it, I 
have come to the conclusion that, as a fertiliser, 
fom^e feed, mulch shade, a prolific bearer of fruit, 
an up-builder of the soil, this bean has no rival. 
As a porch and trellis-shade, with its beautiful dark- 
green foliage, and its long, pendant, down-hanging 
purple bloom, it is truly lovely. The analysis of 
this beau shows ;— Nitrogen, 54 per cent.; crude 
protein, 19; fat. 6 ; fibre, 8 ; moisture, 12. Any further 
information your readers may want, if they will 
send stamp, I will cheerfully reply.— I am. Sir, Ac, 
CEYLON TEAS SELLING AT 2iD. 
PER LIJ. 
CAN THK KUHIlIill BE lUKKTIFJED ? 
[Well may an old Ceyloji planter in Lond'tn 
ask ' Wliat "Estate ' in reference to the follow- 
ing :]- 
Tca-ilrinkers Viil he 8ur|tii.«eil to Icarii that ia 
Min('inj;-lane the Coylon leaves from wiiicli tUeir 
favourite beverage is brewed lias been K'dd at 
the fabiilou^'ly low hiiiu of 2Jd jter lb. This ii 
probably a ie:ord price for ten, and it has 
caused a great deal of indignation among lite 
planters in the island of the " bpicy breeres,' wLo 
declare that the stuff thus sold can be little 
better than ruhbi-^ii, and is calculated to bring 
t he products of Ceylon, and In<lia generitlly, into 
disrei>ute. It woubl be inteie-siing to know liow 
iiiucli per pound the i)ul)lic were asked to pay 
for the artule, or iicw iiiucli a cup they gave 
for the water in whicii it lia^ been steeped for 
a certain lune—Dailij Tdeqmph, May 21. 
Orlando, Florida. 
Captain E. A. WILSON, 
p g jf you desire to say, for the benefit and in- 
formation of your many readers, that this seed may 
be obtained "in your city of John Shaw and Sons, 
6 Great Maze Pond, Borough, you are at liberty to 
clo so. 
EXCHANGE AND TEA. 
TO TH£ EDITOB OV THE ECONninsT, 
Sin, — If your correspondent " East Indi* Merchant" 
will refer to page IdS of " Ferguson's Ceylou Direc- 
tory, 1890-7," the latest issue of the work, he will 
find given as a " rough eatimate of the entire area 
cultivated " in tea in Ceylon 310,000 acres, with » 
" probable eventual extension to " 350,000 acres. In 
another part of the book .t15,0(X) acres are mc'utiooed 
as possibly the acreage. I have inquired from Messrs. 
Kelly & Co., whence they got their figures of 375,000 
acres : it came, as might have been foretold, frnm 
Mr. Ferguson, the sole first-hand authority on this 
matter, and I can hardly doubt that there has been 
some misreading of ;t75,000 for 315,000 acres. To 
anyone who knows Ceylon the statetnent put for- 
ward that 90,000 acres of tea had been planted in 
the last three years needed no contradiction. 
Now, as to Java, " East India Merchant " says, 
" Java had no coffee blight.'' If he will refer to 
Forpuson's Directory, 1898, he will rend at p. 174, 
" The coffee fungus (Hemileia vastatrix), which has 
wrought so much injury in Ceylon, India, and Java, 
reducing their coffee crops so grievously by from fiO 
to (in the case of Ceylon) over 90 per cent., has only 
been casually reported from the Far 'West Al- 
ready alternate crops, a very poor one followed by 
a better, which became the rule in Ceylon and Java 
in the fungus era, have become to operate in Brazil." 
"East India Merchant ' further gives us the exports 
of coffee from Java in 1888 as 515,000 picals. This 
seems to have been the total figtire for that year 
from Java and its dependencies. He does not mention 
that in 1883 the exports amounted to 1,767,000 picnls 
(see Ferguson's Directory, 1893, p. 175), the difference 
between the two years being a greater weight of 
coffee than ever was exported in one year from 
Ceylon. 
•rhe rest of " East India Merchant's " letter teams 
with mistakes of the same kind, bat it is not my duty 
to correct them. 
I wish, however, to say a few words in the charge 
that he brings against tea growers of paying " their 
coolies iu depreciated rupees." The charge is a 
false one. If the fact that the Tamil coolies 
have themselvesof their own free will flocked to Ceylon 
in constantly increasing numbers as the gold price 
of the rupee has fallen be not considered a sufficient 
proof of this, abundant corroborative evidence is to be 
found in the index numbers, which show beyond 
question that up to 1893 the silver rupee his lost none 
of its purchasing powers of all the necessaries of life. 
On this point the Calcutta index numbers, shown in 
the Review of the Trade of Inelia, 1896-97, 1 under- 
