August i, 1891.] THE TROPICAL AGR8CULTURSST. 
91 
bones, oil cake, and fish; now let us examine these 
materials and see what we are dealing with. 
Cattle manure is first on the list. Its effects are 
aa much mechanical as chemical, and where it has 
shown the best resalts I have generally found the 
soil possessed a very poor power of retaining moisture 
as in analysis C. Where cattle are kept solely for 
manurial purposes, cattle muck is very costly, and 
does not always pay for the trouble of making it. 
When made by working bullocks it is a by product, 
and often represents the sole profit on their keep. 
If it were not for the muck it would oitsn be 
just as cheap to hire bandies for the estate work. 
The following is the actual cost of the upkeep of 
a bandy and bullocks in this district:— 
R. a. p. 
Gram for 28 days 126 seers @ R50 V M.,. 6 4 4 
Straw 168bundles@R26rM... 4 6 0 
Salt ... ... ... ... 0 1 0 
Bandyman ... ... ... 8 0 0 
Oil, shoes, repairs to bandy... ... 2 0 0 
Wear and tear of bullocks... ... 2 0 0 
Interest on capital @ 5 V cent ... 1 4 0 
K23 15 4 
In full work the bullocks and bandy earn Rl per 
day, and if they work 24 days out of 28 the profit 
is only 8 pice and the manure. These two bullocks 
produced in 28 days 1,401 lb. of dung having the 
following composition when air-dried: — 
Parts per hundred. 
Moisture ... ... ... 7"94 
* Organic matter and combined water ... .58'92 
Oxides of iron and alumina... ... 1"18 
Lime ... .. ... 1"78 
Alkaline salts ... ... ... 1'12 
Phosphoric acid... ... ... '88 
Insoluble matter &c, ... ... 28'18 
100-00 
* Containing nitrogen ... ... '539 
Fresh dung contained moisture ... 73'990/o 
The dry dung is worth at the most for the manu- 
rial ingredient it contains E8 per ton, the dung iu its 
natural state about R2. Well bedded with bracken 
fern it may be assumed as an outside estimate that 
a pair of bullocks will produce one ton of manure, 
worth about K'2 per ton. The following is an analysis 
of a firat-class cattle manure produced by bedding 
the cattle with bracken fern, they were gram fed. 
Kept in a covered shed the bedding and muck were 
pushed out into a shed below, the urine flowed over 
the heap. 
The sample was taken in March and appeared quite 
dry, when powdered it just looked like brown souff. 
Parts per hundred. 
Moisture ... ... ... 25-83 
* Organic matter and combined water ... 55 23 
Oxides of iron and alumina... ... I'll 
Lime ... ... ... 1'50 
Magnesia ... ... ... '86 
Potash ... ... ... -89 
Soda ... .. ... -41 
Phosphoric acid ... ... ... '55 
Sulphuric acid ... ... ... '13 
Chlorine ... ... ... '24 
Insoluble matter, sand &c.... ... 13-25 
10000 
* Containing nitrogen ... ... '49 
Equal to ammonia ... ... 'GO^/n 
Such a manure is exceeding valuable on poor sandy 
soils, but is too short to be of much use in opening 
up heavy retentive lands, they require horse dung 
and s!raw litter to do good. Cattle manure should 
never be burnt, as its most useful character — its 
meohanioal condition, — is thereby destroyed, and it 
sinks to the value of wood ashes or less. 
We have seen that the manure is costly to produce; 
at ia equally costly to apply. The fullowing table 
show* in lb. what 10 (ten) tons first-olaes gram-fed 
^attle manure iu its natural state containing 75 per 
ent moisture will yield ; many samples of eattle muck 
ontain as much as 85 to 95 percent moisture; other 
amples are hardly cattle manure at rH, being chiefly 
oomposed of line sweepings and other rubbinh of little or 
no manurial value. The table also shows the quantity 
yielded by boues, fish and oil cake ; — 
lb. per acre supplied by 
10 tona 4owt. 4ow6, 4owt. 
cattle raw pure oil 
manure, boues, fish. cake. 
Tri-oalcio phosphate ... 67 226 80 5 
Ammonia ... ... 34 18 31 27 
Potash ... ... 50 4 7 6 
Lime ... ... 49 3 82 1 
Sulphuric acid ... ... 7 
Total ... 207 251 150 39 
Cost, rupees ... ... 120* I3i 9i 11 
Cost of application, rupees 30 5 5 5 
Total cost, rupees ... 150 18J 14J 16 
*If the bullocks do not work, gram-fed cattle manure 
of that quality cannot well bo produced for less. 
Should the amount put down for the applicati.on of 
cattle manure appear excessive, let the questioner work 
out the problem on the supposition that there are 1,200 
trees per acre and that one basketful is given each tree 
Bach basket bas to be filled, the distance to the tree 
and back traversed, and the basket emptied. Suppose 
that the coffee is moderately thick, and that the roads 
are 100 trees apart, then to reach the centre a cjo'io 
walks: — 
To the first tree and back 4 yards 
2cd 8 „ 
3rd 12 „ 
4th 16 „ 
6th 20 „ 
and so on. 
At the tenth tree he has walked 230 yards 
20th 850 „ 
30th 1,860 „ 
40 th 3,280 „ 
50th 5,100 „ 
and by the time he has reached the 52nd tree, he has 
manured the 23rd part of an acre, and walked three 
miles. 
Taking filling and emptying of baskets into account 
he will seldom walk a mile per hour. At such , work 
a coolie would consider 100 trees a hard task, and cer- 
tainly it would be from 10 to 20 times as hard as put- 
ting out 4 cwt of manure mixed with 1 cubic yard 
of burnt earth. The coat of application entered under 
bones, fish, and oil cake, includes the cost of preparing 
1 cubic yard of burnt earth and mixing it with the 
manure. 
This was given me by several managers as two ru- 
pees, and for application tliree rupees so that taking 
cartage &o. into account it is not safe to estimate 
less than R30 per acre for the cattle manture. In 
Ceylon where cattle are often kept solely for manu- 
rial purposes the cost is seldom much under RlOO 
per acre, and with the scanty grazing ground of this 
district it would be difficult to produce any quantity 
of cattle manure, and the small quantity produced 
if the animals are well fed and bedded cannot well 
be made under E12 per ton. So that, except in the 
case of work bullocks, cattle manure of first rate 
quality may be dismissed as too expensive for ordinary 
use, and we must look for some other manure. We 
find in good pure fish the cheapest notive manure, 
Whero first class fish manure is easily procurable 
cattle manure and oil cake, i. e. castor, Hindy, may 
be looked upon as expensive luxuries, only to be 
indulged in where the poverty of the soil demands the 
use of an organic manure. 
Bones decomposo very slowly in this district, and 
steamed bones are preferable to raw on that account, 
they should also be in the finest meal possible, if an 
immediate return for the money spent is expected. 
The use of inch bones in South Coorg might bo termed, 
manuring for posterity, as this generation will reap 
hltle benefit from them. The ooffoe tree is not greedy 
