534 
THE TROPICAL AGEICULTURIST. 
[Fkb. 1, 1904. 
To the Editor. 
BURIAL AND DECOMPOSITION OF 
TEA PRUNINGS. 
London, E.C., Dee. 23rd, 1903. 
Dear Sir,— Judging from notices in the Ceylon 
Observer, it would appear that practical tea 
planters are becoming doubtful of the general 
utility of burying tea prunings in trenches under 
all conditions of soil and weather. At an im- 
portant meeting in Dimbula, it was stated that 
prunings, which had been buried just previous to 
a very wet season in the Uva district, bad not 
decomposed at the end of three or four months of 
very wet weather ; but that an injurious fungus 
was developed to such an extent that one per cent 
of the tea bushes had died in consequence. The 
idea of utilising the leaves and small twigs of tea 
prunings as a future source of humus to the soil, 
is no doubt correct in theory, but to be practically 
useful the conditious of soil and weather must be 
favourable. 
Green leaves like green grass, or clover buried 
near the surface in a light porous soil followed 
by a period of hot dry weather, will rapidly 
decay and afford valuable plant food. But 
damp green leaves associated with large branches 
buried over six inches deep in a stiff ferru- 
ginous clay soil saturated with water, are 
more likely to be a serious source of danger 
than a source of plant food, to the tea shrub. 
In the piesence of an excess of moistuie and a 
deficiency of air an acid decomposition of the 
green leaves is likely to be sec up, and the 
resulting acid compounds will not be conducive 
to the healthy growth of the rootlets of the shrub. 
As long since as 1863, the late Dr. Augustus 
Voelcker, f.r.s., writing in the Journal of the 
Royal Agricultural Society on "Manures for Koot 
Crops," stated that : — 
*' No acid combination as such can enter into 
plants without; doing them serious damage ; even 
free vegetable acids such as Ulmic and Hnmic acida 
are iDjurions to all crops cultivated for food for the 
nse of man or beast ; and unless these acids, which 
are always present in what practical men call sour 
humuB, are neutralised by lime or marl or earth 
none but the roughest and most innutritions herbage 
can be grown." 
The above was the opinion of one who was 
rightly regarded as an authority upon the pro- 
perties and application of artificial manures. 
The success, which has attended the use of 
non-acid manures such as Basic Slag, and the 
more recently introduced and more readily avail- 
able manure, known as Basic Superphosphate, 
is largely due to the fact that both these fertilisers 
have a distinctly alkaline reaction and are 
s^pecially suitable for soils deficient in lime like 
those of Ceylon tea estates. The addition of 
Basic Slag, however, to the buried prunings 
cannot be done sufKciently to ensure the com- 
plete neutralisation of the acid decomposition. 
Consequently instead of burying the prunings 
the safer plan in the writer's opinion would be 
to remove them and after stripping off the leaves 
at some central spot to stack the branches for 
future use as fuel and to allow the leaves to 
decompose in a heap sprinkled with some soil and 
a little freshly burned lime. It the object is to 
convert the green leaves into useful and healthy 
liumus the process of decay will certainly be 
carried on much more rapidly when the action 
of the air is allowed to have full effect, rather 
than when the leaves are buried in trenches in a 
stiff clay soil sodden with excess of accumulated 
water. — Yours faithfully, 
JOHN HUGHES, Agricultural Analyst. 
MR. R. V. WEBSTER AND TAXED 
PACKET TEAS IN NEW ZEALAND. 
New Plymouth, N. Z., Dec. 11th, 1903. 
Dear Sir,— The enclosed cutting from the 
" Taranaki Daily News," with reference to 
tax on packet teas, should interest mem- 
bers of the " Thirty Committee." Yesterday, 
and today I opened a number of different 
brands of packet teas put up in this Colony, 
and found even those labelled as Ceylon 
tea contained a portion of Indian. The 
reason Indian teas are blended is not to 
improve the drinking quality, but to cheapen 
cost, and so enable them to take advantage 
of the good name Ceylon teas hold in this 
quarter of the world. Yours faithfully, 
R. V. WEBSTER. 
(Extract. ) 
TAX ON TEA. 
The deputation appointed by the New Ply- 
mouth Tradesmen's Association to wait on the 
Premier regarding the import tax ot 2d per lb on 
tea in packets journeyed by the afternoon train 
to Inglewood on Wednesday afternoon and met Mr 
Seddon on the express train. The members of the 
deputation were Messrs R Cock (Mayor of New 
Plymouth), H Goodacre (President Tradesmen's 
Association), C Carter, Fraser and H F Russell 
(Secretary to the Association), and were introduced 
by Mr E M Smith, M H R. The facts ot the case 
were put before the Premier by the various dele- 
gates, who explained the position fully— that the 
tax on imported bulk tea had been remitted, but 
had been retained in th case of the packed tea 
imported by retailers. 
The Premier, in replying, said that the tax 
was there now, and could not be removed except 
by legislation. It would have to remain there 
until Parliament could deal with the matter next 
session. He stated that this piece ot legislation 
was passed at the instance of the wholesale pack- 
ing firms, who had represented to him that the 
packing industry of the Colony was suffering by 
this importation of teas packed in pound packets 
by cheap Cingalese labour. They requested that 
the duly of 2d per lb. be imposed on all parcels of 
tea weighing up to two pounds, and that above 
that weight the import should be duty free. He 
had refused to grant that, but had consented to 
insert the clause relative to pound packets. He 
had expected that the House would challenge this, 
but it had been allowed to pass unquestioned. 
Members could not have been attending to their 
business at the time, or the clause would never 
have been made law. He thought the result would 
be that retail firms would now import in bulk and 
do their own packin?. In that way they would 
escape the import charge. 
