Jax\. 2, 1899.] 
THE TEOPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
451 
THE PROPOSED AGRICULTURAL 
DEPARTMENT FOR CEYLON. 
(To the Editor, " Tropical Agriculturist.") 
rRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR NATIVES. 
Sir, — A proposal lias leceiitly been made in 
the Legislative Council to establish an A^^iicLil- 
tiiral jjepartinent for tliis Colony, and the iilea 
18 a goo I one; but it goes without saying th:it 
the utility of such a department must, in a great 
nie.asure, depend on the qualilications of its mem- 
bers ; and should it be established, of course it 
would be the intention of Governmeut that, 
while giving due attention to the interests of 
Che European planters, it should not neglect 
those of t^he native peasantry who are generally 
too ignorant and too poor to do anything for 
themselves, in the way of improvements in agri- 
culture, without assistance, i'heir poverty is not 
owing to any intrinsic impossibility of bettering 
tlieir circumstances, anil they are not so a|iatlietic 
as is commonly asserted ; but they do not know 
how to utilise the resources which lie at their 
disposal unless they are shown the way to do it, 
and to do this would be part of the duty of the 
proposed Agricultural Department. Dr. Trimen 
was very desirous of inducing the villagers to take 
up the cultivation of cacao, and in this he was 
to some extent successful, but not so successful 
as lie wished, because he was dependent far 
assistanoeon the Government Agents and headmen, 
who, however willing they may have been to second 
hiseli'orts, could not do it otherwise than as a work 
of supererogaiion. No doubt cacao is a product well 
adapted for the native i)eatantry, but there are 
othL'i's which would ^uit them equally well, if not 
bettei', and in r-upport- of this assertion some in- 
stances m;iy be adduced. - 
tiEDGKS — I l)egin with hedges because, on 
land ex|)0sed to the inroads of cattle, a secure 
teuce is the first essential to success in any kind 
of cultivation. Nobody likes the trouble of 
planting hedges, because they give no direct re- 
turn ; but no amount of chemical or botanical 
knowledge can be of much practical use to a culti- 
vator if his plants are liable to destruction by 
trespassing cattle. It would be impossible for 
an ob ervant person to travel in this country with- 
out noticing the almost complete absence of 
effective hedges, and yet there is no country in 
which they are more needed, owing to custom 
which ol)tains here of allowing cattle to go about 
at lil)erty. A common fault in the planting of 
hedges in this countiy is that of making them 
too narrow, a single row of hedge plants being 
generally considered sufficient, whereas a hedge, 
to be efleeiive, sh.ould be not less than a yard 
i!i breadth. To .some this may seem to be a 
waste of land, but the grudging of a yard's 
breadth of ground for a hedge is a ease of 
"sitoi.liiig the ship for a halfpenny worth of 
tnr." For hedging some recommend Sapan, others 
prickly jiear [Opunlia) and others American Ah:)e8 
{Agave and Foiircroya) ; but I have tried all 
three and cannot say that any of them have 
proved satisfactory accoiding lo niy experience. 
A snpan hedge rf([uires fairly good soil, heccuse 
in poor soil many of the young plants die ofT, 
leaving too few to be eHective as a fence. Its 
tender leaves are, moreover, eaten by cattle, ao 
that wherever these animals can get at it, a 
liedge of it requires a tempor.iry fence of some 
kind tor its own protection; i'rickly pear makes 
a good fence in good soil, but it will not answer 
where the soil is poor. In Mexico (of which 
country it is the national emblem in the same 
way as the lose, thistle and shamrock are the 
national emblems of England, Scotland and Ireland 
respectively) there are said to be impenetrable 
hedges of prickly pear twenty feet high; but in 
this country the plant seldom attains half that 
height, and is usually not more than a foot and 
a half or two feet high and so brittle that a 
touch is enougii to break it, so that a hedge 
of it is of no use whatever as a protection from 
cattle. American aloe.s would be the best hedge 
plants we have, were it not for their liability 
to be damaged or destroyed by porenjtines ; but 
this renders a hedge of them unreliable in any 
place infested by these destructive animals. I 
think the best stj'le of hedge for this country 
cotisists of two rows of some rigid, thorny shrub, 
one yard apart, with Malia Eraiuiniya {Zyzyphus 
riif/osa) i)lanted at intervals of ten feet or so in 
the space between the lows ; but I have not 
iiuile made up my mind on tlie subject, and thi.s 
will be one of the lirst matters for the con- 
sideration of the proposed Agricultural Depart- 
ment, should its establishment become an ac- 
complished fact. 
SiSAL Hemp.— When sisal hemp i.s cultivated 
on an extensive scale, of course the most pro- 
fitable method of cleaning the fibre is to do it 
with a machine ; but a machine is not indispen- 
sable, as by steeping the leaves in water and 
beating them by hand, the hemp can be extr.acted 
from th^m as easily as coir from coconut husks 
in the same way ; and it is only by this moile 
of cleaning the fibre that the plant is ever likely 
to be of much practical use to the native pea- 
santry, liecause it would be impossible to con- 
struct any machine capable of doing the woric 
efl'eciently which would not be prohibtive to them 
by reason of its costliness. Mauritius henij> 
(Fourcroya gigantea), Cuban hemp [F. cubensis) 
and Pita hemp (Agave americana) can also be 
cleaned by hand, though not quite so easily na 
the sisal hemp, as the fibre of the three former 
plants is liner than that of the last mentioned, 
and consequently more liable to break. For a 
long time I thought it useless to try this method 
of cleaning aloe fibre, because I believed that it 
would be impossible to rot the leaves in water 
without at the same time rotting the fibre also; 
but having at last made the experiment, I find 
that this idea was a fallacy. Of course the fibre 
will be spoilt — as any other fibre would be — if 
the steeping be too much prolonged ; but that 
needs not liappen, as the leaves can, during the 
rotting process, be examined from time to time 
to ascertain if the steeping has been sullicicnt. 
When aloe leaves are large they shobld, how- 
ever, be crushed before steeping, because other- 
wise the thin parts of them will be too niucli 
rotteil before the thick parts are suthciently so. 
Palm Oil.— The Elais giii>icensis grows well 
and flowers freely in this country, but its 
flowers often come to nothing, anl this 
is probably one reason — though not the 
only one — why it has not hitherto been culti- 
vated here, except as an ornamental tree. The 
reason of its not bearing much fruit in this 
country, in ])roportion to the abundance of its 
lloweiing, does not seem to he generally under- 
stood ; and indeed so small is tho interest 
which most people here tiike in it that not even 
its correct English name is commonly known, 
though the information that it is the " OUy 
Palm" can bo obtained from no less pojiular an 
authority than Webster's Dictionary. The fre- 
([ucnt aijortiveness of its flowers in this country 
