JtLY 1, 1901.] THE TEOPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
IT 
THE TEA PLANTING INDUSTRY OF 
CEYLON, MAY 1901: 
387,000 ACRES OF TEA ON PLANTATIONS 
AND 5,000 CULTIVATED IN NATIVE 
GARDENS. 
A good deal of curiosity has been mani- 
fested by Visiting Agents and others as to 
how the figures for tea area would work out 
on the present occasion, in view of the check to 
planting and the possible abandonment of un- 
profitablefields. la July 1898, the total extent on 
plantations was 364,000 acres ; but we showed 
that, reckoning a certain acreage of coffee 
planted up with tea and about 7,000 acres in 
native gardens, we might take the Tea Indus- 
try of Ceylon as being well on to 375,000 acres 
by the end of 1898. Now the extent covered 
with tea on the regular plantations is 
387,000 acres, in consequence of additional 
clearings in 1899 and last year, besides 5,000 
acres, which we make out the cultivated 
native gardens to represent at the pre- 
sent time, and a certain extent still, we 
fear, to come over from coffee fields ; but, 
perhaps, against this may go the gradual 
exclusion of poor corners of tea in different 
districts, so that the safest reckoning will 
be to put 392,000 acres as representing the 
Tea Industry of Ceylon in May 1901— an 
increase of 17,000 acres on the full reckoning for 
2f years ago. Out of this total of 392,000 acres, 
we put the extent of tea which is five years old 
and upwards at 360,900 acres (and this must 
have given an average of 411 lb. per acre in 
last year's crop) — so that there are fully 
30,000 acres of young tea yet to come into 
full bearing in Ceylon, This should be a 
further warning to our Indiq.n neighbours 
against further planting at this time. 
The greatest addition of tea to any district 
in the past two years is in Haputale, where 
the increase equals 4,000 acres ; Badulla dis- 
trict shews an addition of 1,500; Kalutara 
2,000; Kelani Valley 1,400; while Dimbula 
has more tea by 1,800 acres and Kuruwitta 
district an increase of 1,200 acres. On the 
other hand Dikoya has altered very little 
and the return for Pussellawa and a few 
other districts positively aggregates a less 
total than in 1898. 
Dimbula of course heads the list with the 
largest acreage of tea — over 46,000 ; while 
the Kelani Valley comes next with well-nigh 
35,000 acres, and Dikoya only a little under 
30,000. In all Uva there are now 60,000 acres 
of the staple ; while between Great Western 
and Adam's Peak the three districts com- 
prise 95,600 acres — surely one of the finest 
expanses of tea in the world. 
MR. KBLWAYBAMBER AND OUR 
TEA INDUSTRY IN UVA AND DIKOYA. 
Mr. Kelway Bamber has been away on a 
visit to an estate in the Lunugala district and 
also (yesterday afternoon) to another estate in 
Dikoya, and returns to Colombo early 
next week. His investigations are widen- 
ing and, after the preliminary canter 
hitherto, the results should increase in 
interest to the planting community. One of 
3 
the most curious things that has struck Mr, 
Bamber is that young tea on new clearings 
nowadays, he is constantly being told, does 
not give anything like the same result in 
growth in the same time as when tea was 
first planted. The cause of this, Mr. Bamber 
thinks,, must lie in the smaller quantity of 
carbonic acid, which goes to forUi organic 
matter, that is drawn from the air nowadays 
by the average tea-bush in any one district ; ana 
new clearings near old tea-fields are thus bound 
to show smaller results than the former 
young clearings in new country. As little 
as 3 to 5 per cent of inorganic matter in the 
tea bush is drawn from the soil, the 
material for organic matter mainly 
from the air. It is to return some of 
this organic material to the soil that should 
?u °^ cultivator. In addition to 
the burying of prunings, Mr, Bamber ad- 
vises cutting down and burying the jungle 
mMjf-,— after leaving it awhile to rot, pre- 
ferably, so as to give oft' carbonic acid gas. 
Other aids to tea-planters would be forth- 
coming if a Geological Museum, with speci- 
mens of rock from every district, were 
attainable in Ceylon. Rocks, it must be 
remembered, are almost invariably indicators 
of the soil to which they belong ; and if such 
a geological branch could be added to the 
Colombo Museum, Mr. Bamber would be 
able to extend his scientific work to the 
analysis of the constituents of the rock- 
formations of the various districts and the 
determination of the suitability or otherwise 
of the soil for tea, or indeed for other pro- 
ducts. We trust that, as soon as the time 
comes for Mr. Bamber to take his share in 
such a work— which, we think, will be inti- 
mately connected with the Geological Survey 
when that comes, but can scarcely wait for 
it entirely,— Government will do their part 
with a ready hand. The planters, in pro- 
viding typical rock specimens from their 
several districts, we may be quite sure, will 
readily do their part. 
SAMBUR-HUNTING IN CEYLON. 
BY THOMAS FARR, 
(From the Wide World Magazine, May.) 
[A detailed description of a very exciting sport 
practised in the Horton Plains district. The 
photographs will be found interesting ; but we 
desire to draw special attention to the spirited 
frontispiece and other special drawings which 
have been prepared for this narrative by Mr John 
G Millais, F z s., etc. For twenty year's Mr Parr 
has been the leading elk-hunter in Ceylon, and has 
been master of three different packs. In his 
article he describes " the run of liis life."— Ed.] 
Sambur, or elk as they have been called in 
Ceylon from time immemorial, vary in courage to 
a most strikinw degree. There is the stag that 
will bellow and squeal almost as soon as he 
catches your eye— even before a hound lias 
touched him ; and then there is the gallant, fear- 
less brute that will fight to the last aud die game 
without so much as a groan. 
But I must describe elk-hunting as it is carried 
on in Ceylon before I give you an account of the 
grand " day" we had on the 11th of June. Sir 
