.T\N. 2, 1899.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
493 
their perquisites also. As Bret Harte, had he been a 
planter •' could, or would, or should have sung";— 
" Do I sleep? do I dream ? 
Do I wonder and doubt? 
Are tliinf;.s what they seem ? 
Or are visions about ? 
• Is our civilisation a failure ? 
Or tlie ' [loor honest planter' played out?" 
—Yours iaithf uUy, W. H. M. 
CA<'"'AO DISEASE. 
Sir, — I enclose for your perusal a specimen 
of the translation in Tamil of the Rules drawn 
up by Mr. Carrutliers in reference to Cacao Disease, 
published for distribution by the courtesy of 
Government — I am, sir, yours faithfully, 
A. PHILIP. 
Secretary, Planters' Association of Ceylon. 
Kandy, December 10th. 
[.\ very useful Tamil Circular.— Ed. T.A.] 
FLOKIDA VKLVET BEAN: "THE 
EATING O'T," 
Dec. 16. 
Deak Sir, — With re-^erence to the comments in 
the Observer of the 13th in>b., on the Florida 
Velvet Bean, it would be inteiesting to know 
from some person who has actually eaten the seeil 
whether any ill cH'ecis have been afterwards ex- 
perienced. I nude; stand the seed is not considered 
edible in FK'rida, as the following extract from 
a Florida paper will show : " A nuniDer of people 
were made ill from eating some velvet beans shelled 
out of tlie gieo i pods and cooked. The symptoms 
were nausea, parking of the bowels, headache, 
and violent action ot the heart. Afterwards 
some beans were <i,i > en cooked and raAV to chickens, 
some of which liied, and the beans they had 
eaten were found indigested." 
The seeds you kindly sent me of Mr. 11. L. 
Brown's consignment have grown remarkably well 
in tlie neighliom Iio.hI of Kandy, and if yon wish 
I shall be iiI'M^L'il to send you some to try. The 
chief value id I hi-; ciimher seems to he for green 
manuring and fuilder. — Yours faithfully, 
"G." 
[We can at once answer " G." We have twice 
partaken of a dish of the beans grown in Ceylon 
during the piist two months and enjoyed them 
without i'.ny ill effect afterwards. Our appu and 
cook seemed to recognise the beans as old iic- 
quaint;ances and [lerhaps they treated them dif- 
ferently from the cook in Florida ? — Ed. T.J. ] 
GKEEN BUG IN COFFEE AND ITS CUKE 
Sir,— I send an extract from " Das Echo " 
(translated from German) giving a cure for the 
green bug : — 
" According, to a preliminary report. Professor 
A. Zimmerman of the Botanical Garden of 
Buitenzorg has discovered upon the green bugs of 
the collee a fungus which causes their epidemi- 
cal death. This fungus is easily cultivated upon 
the plant Ogar-Ogar so as to obtain a sutiicienc 
quantity of spores to propagate the infection on 
a, large scale. Professor Ziinmertnan recommends 
to touch the bugs with a brush which has been 
dipped in the culture of the fungus, late in the 
afternoun on (ihints which are out of the sun's 
rays. After tour days the new growth can be 
seen with the lu.ked eye." 
It is lo the interest of coflee planters of other 
countries to study this fungus which they can 
procure from Buitenzorg. This is another 
instance of the imnortance of scientilic investi- 
gation, ■ i'LANTEK. 
PRODUCE AND PLANTING. 
INDIAN TEA 
As the tea industry is at present under a cloud 
there is no lack of good-natured friends to sigh 
over the position and say: ''We toll you so. 
But for a really depressing, never-hope-again wav of 
regarding things the following from the I'ali J/all 
Gazette deserves special mention. The writer of this 
dirge says : '' The public should be in the mood at 
present to consider the dross in their treasuries, and 
we commend Indian tea shares to their unfriendly 
attention, should they be burdened with this parti- 
cular class of security. There can be but little doubt 
that the trade is entering upon a crisis, which will 
account for the anxiety of certain retailers to con- 
vert their undertakings into limited liability com- 
panies. The weak spot is the planter. The enormous 
increase in output and the increase in the area under 
tea are having results usual when production is out- 
stripping consumption. Some of the pessimists profess 
to see in improved Chinese methods an inflneuce 
that will act adversely to Indian giovvers. It is suffi- 
cient for the present in this respect to note that the 
Indian planter always has the initial advantages of 
cheiiper l?bour and the actual hold on the markets. 
The real difficulty is over-pi-oduction. Private advices 
from planters of experience in Assam assures us that 
the falling off in prices has led to resolutions to 
considerably increase the out-put, and it does not re- 
quire an economist to show th.-it where quantity 
and not quality becomes the controlling influence the 
outlook is gloomy enough. That Ceylon will feel 
the pinch more than Assam is probable. In fact, at 
the present time we should scarcely desire to see 
oar dearest enemy a holder of the average Ceylon 
tea share, liv* the crisis is rabidly approaching in 
Assam. There being no controlling influence in the 
matter of the output it is a case of every man for 
himself. The weak companies and the small planter 
must inevitably go to the wall during the next few 
years, and meanwhile there are low prices and 
seriously curtailed profits to be faced by the sounder 
concerns. It is thus time that the investor in Indian 
shares should seriously consider his position, and 
although the storm may not loom up immediately 
it cannot be deferred for any very long period." 
There is not too much " crisis " about this, but just 
enough. A few figures may be useful, therefore, in 
order to show that the position is not quite hopeless. 
The imports of Indian tea for the period June to 
October this year wer • 02 million lb, against 61^ in 
1S97, while the deliveries were this year 55J million 
lb. against 48i in 1897, and the stock is less now than 
it was this time last year. These figures are much 
more to the point than the P. JI. Gazette jeremiad. 
INDIAN AND CEYLON TEA. 
To the Editor of the P<(?^ Mall Gazette. 
Sir,— Our attention having been called to your 
article in yesterday's issue on Indian and Ceylon tea 
shares, we venture to place a few facts before you 
bearing on the subject. 
For many years past the production of Indian 
and Ceylon teas had been outstripping consumption, 
but since January last this has not been the case, as 
in markets outside the United Kingdom, particularly 
in Ameiira, liussia, the Continent of Europe, and 
also largely in A'istralia and New Zealand, a very 
important demand has sprung up for British grown 
teas. Owi' g to the recent increase in tins outside 
demand the danger of overproduction, which has been 
facing the British grown tea industry appears to have 
already passed. In support ef this we now place 
before you a few rather important figures. For the 
fivst nine mouths of this year the use of Ceylon tea in 
markets outside the United Kingdom has increased 
7 million pounds, the ti^ures being 28 million pounds, 
as ng.iiust 21 million pounds for the same nine 
months of last year. During that period production 
of Ceylon tea showed an increase of about 2 niilliou 
pjunds, but the net result is that u million pounds of 
Ceylon tea were diverted from the home market, 
