85'2 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTUEIST. /"June 1, 1904. 
mercial instincts that during his short visit 
to Ceylon, he should be able to put his 
finger on this, our weakest point, in manu- 
facture. Nor is liquid fuel, as applied to 
our stoves, going to remedy matters— even 
presuming that the cast-iron mechanism of 
these will permit of its employment for long. 
As after all we still have this hi^h temper- 
atured vaporised air to contend with, which, 
with the excessive blast currents it is 
absolutely necessary to employ to accomplish 
our wprk, we only dispel any, and all, 
quality from our teas. The radical change, 
Mr Thomson anticipates, must come in this 
scientific age, but we must retrace our s^eps 
in search of appliances which will embody 
th® principle of our oldest system, 
"THE CHULU." 
COCONUT-PLANTING QUERIES. 
Trinconialee, April I9th. 
Dear Sir,— I have read with much interest Mr, 
Ferguson's book on Coconut Planting. Gould you 
give me iaformatioa on the following points :— 
(1) The best fence to put up to keep out 
porcupine as well as pig. 
(2) The best manure (artificial) for a sandy loam. 
(3) Is salt water useful in forcing on plants, 
or is it detrimental ?— Thanking you in antici- 
pation.— Yours faithfully, 
^ ■ A. H. S. 
[A Coconut Planter says :— (1) No fence can 
help ; poison, lead, and saw or coir dust with tar 
round each plant. (2) Analysis must decide— 
various planters adopt various mixtures. (3) A 
little salt (a handful) round a plant to keep off 
white ants, rather helps, and an occasional quart 
of sea water may not hurt, but standing water 
must do harm if within reach of roots.— Ed, T.A. \ 
CEYLON TEA AND THE COMMISSIONER ON 
THE CONTINENT. 
MR. MARCEL CRITICISES FIGURES. 
Havre, April 22nd, 1904- 
Sib,— Youi readers may perhaps have forgotten 
that last year I called attention to two mistake's 
which Mr Renton made in his report for 1902 
when he dealt with the French Official statistics 
relating to tea. Those mistakes were— 
1. — Confounding the quantities of tea taken into 
consumption with those imported, 
2. — Putting a false interpretation upon the term 
" ludes Anglaises " which he took to mean British 
India and Ceylon only, where as in reality ie 
comprises all the British Possessions in Asia, in- 
cludiner Hongkong and Singapore. 
In order to refresh their memory let me quote 
the remarks with which I introduced the subject 
in my letter of 13th March 1903. 
, " Mr. Kenton's method of dealing with figures 
Is as fantastic as that which he employs when des- 
cribing the sayings and doings of Ambassadors 
whom he has never seen. In his report of Slst 
December 1902 he gives a table of the Imports of 
tea into France per French returns, from which 
he makes it appear that the imports from British 
India and Ceylon were: — 
1899 1900 1901 
124,698 144,002 152,943 Kilos. 
He makes two egregious mistakes. The first is 
that the figures quoted are not the quantities im- 
ported but the quantities raises en consomma* 
tion " — taken into consumption — i.e. the quantities 
upon which duty has been paid. The quantities 
imported are very diflerent- viz. 
1899 19(0 1901 
Indes Anglaises 317,855 336,629 728,815 Kilos." 
Mr Renton in his report for 1903 attempts to 
reply to my charge. He refers to a letter of 26tl: 
November in which he dealt with the matter in 
detail. That letter, so far as I am aware, has not 
been published. I can therefore only deal with 
what I find in the report itself. Let me first 
remark that he is silent on my statement that he 
never saw the British Ambassador in Paris. He 
takes it lying down. Regarding the first mistake, 
confusing imports with consumption, he would 
have us believe that there was no mistake ; he says 
that he only dealt with the quantities cleared for 
home consumption and it seems to him the most 
natural thing in the world to explain that when 
he spoke of Imports he meant Consumption. That 
won't wash. Imports and Consumption are two 
totally distinct and different terms, as distinct as 
Births and Deaths. There is nothing far-fetched 
in this comparison. Imports increase the stock of 
Tea and Consumption diminishes it, just as Births 
increase, and Deaths diminish the stock of huma- 
nity, if I may employ such an expression, No 
man would think of using the term Imports when 
he meant Consumption any more than he would 
speak of Births when he meant Deaths. No, Sir, 
the fact is, and no amount of sophistication can 
conceal it, that owing to imperfect comprehen- 
sion of the French Tables on his own part or on 
that of his advisers, Mr Renton has blundered 
badly. 
And see how inconsistent he is. While profes- 
sing to deal only with the quantities cleared for 
home consumption — which of course is the only 
criterion of the progress that tea is making in 
France — he seizes upon the fact that there has been 
an increase in the exports from Ceylon in 1903, 
compared with 1902, as a proof of the success of his 
propaganda. I should be sorry to deprive Mr 
Renton of the statisfaction he derives from this 
increase, but I would point out that bounties were 
given on the teas imported in 1900 and 1901. 
This had the effect of stimulating exports from 
Ceylon in those yearsj over and above actual re- 
quirements, and, as a consequence the exports 
in 1902 fell oflf considerably. May nob this in 
some measures explain the improvement in 1903 ? 
I now come to mistake No. 2. Mr Renton says 
that he has no reason to doubt the correct com- 
pilation of the French figures and that the quan- 
tities entered as cleared from bond as coming from 
Les Indes Anglaises are the actual produce of 
India and Ceylon and not China tea shipped at 
Hongkong and Singapore. If the term has that 
restricted meaning in regard to the clearances from 
bond, it must necessarily have the same meaning 
all through the French Tables, and, notably, in 
the figures of Imports, We should in that case 
expect a correlation between the quantities France 
professes to have received from India and Ceylon 
and those which were actually exported to France 
from those countries. There is no such correlation. 
The French figures are invariably very much 
larger. Take for example the two years referred 
