THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [July i, 1891. 
1A 
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operations, he adda irrigation onoe or twice a week, 
which beinp; impraotionble on most of our Ceylon 
fieldn, don't snit un. 
Many minor errors may be forgiven to an author 
who takes euoh high grnund, on the Tnoat important 
operations to the coconut planter. " Keep your soil 
well broken, and keep putting manure mto it," lias 
been for ynars tlie oft-repeated advice of one Ceylon 
planter ; perhnps a voice from af«r may have more 
powHr for fnrtheri'ig the improved method. 
We have only two species of beetle tlmt attacks 
the cooonut tree in Ceylon. The liuruminiya, a 
large black one (not figured iu this book), 
breeds in dung-heaps and in accumul"tions 
of decaying vegetable matter. It cuts into the cabbage 
and feeds ou the tender undeveloped leaves, the effects 
of which are cat and ragged leaves in after hfe. It 
does not breed iu the tree but merely dines and departs. 
Few trees in a plantation entirely encape, and some 
that are much to their taste, are kept in a chronic 
state of disreputable ruggedness. The other is the 
red beetle, kandaparmwa (eating worm) of the Sinba. 
lese. The dangerous time with this foe, is from the 
time, the stem shows above ground, till it begins to 
flower. It has a strong frontal horn, with which it 
oan enlarge to its purpose any craok or wound on the 
stem, but it cannot penttrate the ripe rind. The rapid 
expansion of the stem in a quick-growing tree often 
splits the base of a leaf ; and in the crack so produced 
the young grub lives on the bubstance of the leaf till 
strong enough to gnaw its way into the stem. Split 
leaves should therefore be carefully removed as soon 
as noticed; but all whole ones should be allowed to 
remain on the stem till they rot, the danger of re- 
moving them being breaking the surface of the stem 
or exposing it before it is suffioently hardened. When 
the grub is detected in a tree, the safest . way 
of dealing with it is to root it out, cut it into chips 
and collect and destroy the insects in all their stages. 
Fortunately the whole colony stick to one tree, as 
long as it stands, and the whole f;imily, fomeiimps 
amounting to 150, can be disposed of at once. The 
grand precaution is never to trim the leaves within 
three feet of the stem: nine-tenths of the trees des- 
troyed by this insect, on Ceylon plantations, have been 
due to wounds inflicted on the stems in trimmiog 
off dead leaves. 
Notes.— 18 feet is the length of the leaf of a mature 
thriving tree. 
The manurial elements most needed, in coconut, as 
in most other cultivations, are nitrates and phosphates 
in few cases need any others be specially provided, 
as thev are in combination in all manures. 
I think a basket of dung more scientific treatment 
for a cooonut tree than a pounding with a paddy pestle. 
In Ceylon the coconuts are gathered six times iu the, 
year ; the Jan. -Feb. crop being the smallest, and 
June- July the largest 
Two plants from one nut is not an uncommon event, 
and three are sometimes to be seen, but a single nut 
here bas thrown out no less than five. About 20 years 
ago a nursery plant was shown at an Agri-Hortioulturil 
exhibition in Colombo, with flower on it. 
In parts of our lowcountry, where more than 100 
inches of rain falls, in the year, the trees carry fine 
full heads of leaves, but bear comparatively small crops, 
go that too much moisture is rather worse than too 
much drought. I suppose, that in a saturated soil, 
the soluble plant food is too much diluted for fruit 
forming. 
THE MODERN PLANTER. 
In an article under this heftd a writer in the Glohe 
Bays :— " The word still calls »o the mind's eye a vwry 
Bun-burned gentleman in a white jean suit, v;illi a 
Panama bat on his head, a whip in his hsnd, t trcmt; 
language ou bis lip, and a combative assnrtmetit of cold 
Jriuks and fiery seaFoning under his waistcoat; n man 
who in Tory to th« I'ackbone in his npholdiug of old 
DOti'ins and rnannera and ciiHtoms, violent in his 
prejadiocB, prodigal iu hi» expenditure and lavish 
in his hospitality and the limit of whose ideas is 
defined by the boundaries of his own island. But 
this accepted portrait is no more true to life than are 
ihe stage sailor, or the stage countryman; or the 
mother-in-law in fiction, or the hero of the penny dread- 
ful, for, although many an East or West lu iian planter 
leads as solitary a life as did his predecessors in the pre- 
stoam age, he has moved with the times in every 
respect. But for his sunhat and his easy costume he 
might be anyth'ng or anywhere but what or where he 
is. He is not even bronzed by the sun — not half so 
bronzed as his globe-trotting visitor, or as many a 
young Englishman after a cricket season or a summer 
on the river, for the very sufficient reason that when he 
does go out into the sun, which is only at certain tirceg 
of the day, he protects himi-elf with broad hat, dark 
ppeclacles, and umbrella. He is usually temperate and 
as often as not an abbtainer, elthongh, for his own good 
in such a dicaate, rarely a teetotaller, and would as 
soon think of laying his whip across the back of a 
negro as of sitting down to a steady consumption of 
heavy viands washed down by draughlsof heady, fiery 
liquids at the end of a day's work according to the 
tra'litional "good old" cui-tom although he foUowi 
tradition in asking his visitor wbat he will take to 
drink. Solitary his life often is, be it amidst the tea 
lands of Assam or the cane pieces and cocoa plantations 
of the West Indies. He may have to ride twenty-five 
miles for a doctor and to depend npnn the tr' nsport on 
the hf-ads of negroes for the neeessan'ps and luxuries of 
life. His society is simply that of neighbonring planters 
which may mean that from week's end to week's end 
he never sees a white face. Bat he is by no means 
a solitary man, for not only does he surround himself 
with as many refinements as possible, not only does 
every mail keep him in constant touch with the Old 
Country, but as often as not he simply lives on bis 
estate during the ' crop months,' and spends the 
remainder of the year at home, and is therefore a 
very distinct and different being from the planter of 
Tom Oriiiffle's era, who made his estate his world, 
f.i d regarded a return to the land of his birth as 
the remotest of contingencies." 
The writer might have added that those planters 
who " spend the remainder of the year at home " 
are few and far between, and may be regarded as 
the favourites of fortune, '"'le proprietor of a very 
prosperous tea or sugar estate may indulge in this 
form of luxury, but on the majority of lea gardens 
and sugar estates the resident manager is a hard 
working man, very much on the spot, and his holi- 
days are not by any means at brief intervals. 
Old times are indeed gone. The pay is not what 
it was, the nature of the work is changed, the res- 
posibility is areater, and, if the planter is not also 
proprietor, he has to keep a sharp look out on his 
estimates and his year's working, or he will be speedily 
called to account. The romance of a planter's life — 
if there ever were much — is now reduced to a matter- 
of-fjict existence, tempered by tennis, the latest and 
most economic machinery, and the Mincing Lane 
markets. — H. and C. Mail. 
THE MACARONI OP COMMERCE. 
Maoaroni and the kindred preparations have 
come to rank among the important food products. 
This article consisted originally of bits of paste 
and cheese pressed or squeezed into balls. The 
name is now applied to a paste which is manu- 
factured from the " aemoule" of wheat or wheat 
meal. It covers many of the Italian pastes which 
are used for food in one shape or another, but 
to Americans the form best known and most 
commonly found on the table is that of wheaten pipes 
varying from a quarter of an inch to an inch diameter. 
Spaghetti and vermicelli are classed under the same 
peneral head, as are also the infinite variety of 
tiny fanciful forms which have become such an 
adjunct in the preparation of soups. 
