Kov. 1, 1898.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTCJEIST. 
321 
yielding surface and removing the least useful wood 
from each bush. This po^nt is worthy of one 
of your circular letters, by which you get the 
opiuion of many practical men. Letters of this 
sort will do us more good than Chemical Exports. 
The secoiid letter which I find in your Tro/iicnl 
Agriculturist of August 1898, by one " Willing to try " 
shows me that I ha.ve set men thinking, and think- 
ing also will do more for us than " Experts." In 
this letter my system is said to be " New " but 
it is not new. 1 got all the ideas from the Tea 
CyclopaBdia of 1H81. I have published not " a new 
system but my experience of say four years of a 
common sense system. Take for instance one sen- 
tence on page 68 of the Cyclopaedia: — "We must 
never forget that the severity of a surgical opera- 
tion is, except perhaps in tl e most desperate cases, 
nlways proportionate to the stamina of the patient. 
Similarly when contemplating how bushes are to be 
pruned, we must never forget to proportion the 
severity of the cutting to the condition of the 
bushes and the richnfss or poverty of the soil." 
This hit my fancy, aud I said that I would try. 
I found bushes which were rapidly becoming pen- 
sioners. I gave tlie old things a quiet time, more 
cultivation, no cutting down and really the effect 
is veri/ good. You can cut down a plot of tea on 
good lan^ and perhaps increase the yield, hut in my 
opinion that plot will never again give the same 
average yield Irom year to year. 
I did not intend to cffer advice to men who 
have good tea bushes and good soil, but still I 
think that the best tea treated as I suggest from 
the beginning, and supplied with labour sufficient to 
take all the leaf proauced would not stop short of 
1,600 lb. per acre. 
My garden yields 350 lb. of good tea per annum per 
acre. If it had been treated from the first on my 
present system it would give now fully 800 lb. per 
acre of the same leaf. Some of the bushes are splen- 
did, and yield even now at rather more than this 
rate. With all the bushes equally good, I would 
have 90 per cent "f the possible " plucking area," now 
I have barely 50 per cent of the ground covered by 
leaf. The good yield would have encouraged better 
cultivation and probably manuriiig; in fact this Com- 
pany would have been made fully four times its pre- 
sent value. Aud the reason is that each man who 
worked it worked/or //ie season, and not for the wel- 
fare of the estate. And I also believe that this is the 
reason why cutting down has become universal, so 
much so that it is hard to find a single instance of a 
tea estate that has not been cut down several times. 
I may be utterly wrong, and perhaps the universal 
practice is the light one, aud perhaps I myself may 
find iu course of time that cutting down is necessary, 
bat I have no doubt myself that I am right, and for 
this reas n I believe that my experience will prove 
useful to many men, particularly to those who are 
taking charge of old gardens and who contemplate 
cutting down as the only remedy to renew the jield 
of the bushes. Cut down the whole show if you can 
afford to give it a rest and let it grow again before 
■you pluck It, so that the following year you can prune 
the bushes to 2 or 3 feet and after that never 
cnt down again. If you can't afford to wait for new 
bushes, then cut out a percentage of the worst wood 
yearly, and let the new wood growiug up from below, 
be pruned as high as possible so as to give the greatest 
possible surface to the bush. Here is another hint 
from my old friend — " For each well-developed new 
Btem cut out the worst or least productive stem. In 
this way a bush may be renewed iu a year or two 
instead of butchered in five minutes"; and another: 
'' It may be taken as a general rule that the higher 
the class of plant, '.c, the nearer it npprosches indiffe- 
uous (aud the furth'jst from Cliiun) the more sparing 
one must be with Uie pruning knife. I trust ti at no 
One will accuse mc of suggusting that my .^ysti m of 
praaiug willgive 1,COO lb. ol tea ptrajie frtm an 
average garden and with average lal our for plucking. 
The following will be a useful 
TABJ E OF THE LABOUR REQUIEED FOR 
PLUCKIKG : 
8 months for plueking=;2i0 days 
Per acre 12 3 
Pluck- cooly. coolies, coolies. 
Tea Leaf ings 
400 1600 21 34 17 11^ i 
800 3200 24 68 34 22.V V coarse tea 
1600 6400 24 136 68 45^ ) 
400 1600 48 17 84 5-j | 
800 3200 48 34 17 HJ I finest tea 
1600 6400 48 68 34 29^ j 
Referring to the above it will be seen, that given one 
cooly per acre, who can pluck 34 lb. of leaf at uUervals 
of 10 days, the acre will yield 400 lb. of coarse tea. 
Also that with plucking at intervals of 5 days one cooly 
per acre on au average of 17 lb. of leaf per cooly, 
will give a yield of 400 lb of jtae tea. It would re- 
quire a good acre to yield every five days, but such tea 
IS not at all uncommon. But when you come to the 
1,600 lb. per acre it is seen that at intervals of 10 
days (i.e. for coarse tea) one cooly would have to pluck 
168 lb. of leaf. Two coolies plucking 68 lb. each would 
do and be practicable off a very fine plot of tea. 
But, to get i,600 lb of fine tea jer acre would require 
at least 2/; coolies per acre as a i average i.e., at some 
seasons the plot would yitUl no more than 20 lb. per 
cooly, aud during the rushes it would give 4ll to 50 1b. 
per cooly. Youmust have the bestuf bushes, and the best 
of coolies, and lots of them. 
To conclude I may state that" this system 
of Pruning is of special value against the effects 
of drought. The bad effects of hard cut- 
ting are apparent according to the severity of 
the droughts. In the Dooars, a bush can be cellar- 
pruned and be a bush again in a few years, but 
it seems to me such a waste of everything to spoil 
a good plucking surface instead of preserving it 
intact aud using sensible methods. 
I hope soon to see a letter advocating the pe- 
riodical cutting down of tea bushas. 
Between the two opposite systems wo shall all 
gain some good lessons — and be guided chiefly by 
our circumstances. But at any rate more of us will 
know what we are doing and not be ruled by con- 
vention. 1874. 
MINING PLUMBAGO AND OFFICIAL 
REGULATIONS. 
Sept. 17. 
Deau Sir,— The information you yive under 
the above heading in your issue of 14th inst. is 
very interesting. It is much to be feared that 
many clauses of the " Mines and Machinery 
Ordinance No. 2 of 1896 " are more honoured 
in the breach than the observance. If the clauses 
you quote as to tlie opening and working of 
mines are conscientiously obeyed, the Government 
Agents of more than one Kachclieri should by 
this time have imposing piles of notices. Vou do 
not mention what the penalty is for breach of 
these clauses, nor whether any reward is ollered 
to informers (I infer there is none). I could tell 
you of nu)re than a score of pits that have been 
opened in one district within the past si.\ weeks: 
n>ost of tlieni, if not all, I feel sure without notice 
being given. This promiscuous digging is often 
done with the encouragement ot the wealthy 
owners of okl-es-.ablished pits. As one of your 
correspondents recently pointed out, these gentle- 
men have now joined tlie ranks of the illicit 
receivers and aie ready to buy any ]. lumbago 
brought to them without cariiic to enquire wlieiher 
it is stolen or r.ot. This ouglit at once to bo 
