February i, 1892.] THF TftOPlCAL AGRICULTURIST. 
555 
estimateB given by practical men of experience on 
the Bpot, Arabian ooSee can be brought into bearing 
lor about $200 per acre ; but to make the matter 
absolutely certain, so lar as such matters can be 
certain, make it £30 Bteiling. With ordinary luck 
the third year's crop Bhould pay all its eipeuBes, 
and from the fourth year with an annual crop of $6 
per acre, at current rates for such coffee as would 
be produced at 2,000 to 3,000 feet elevation and 
costing £15 per annum for production, say 50s per 
owt., there would remain a clear profit of £15 per 
acre, or nearly 50 per cent on the capital outlay. 
With crops on young coffee, 5 to 10 years of age of 8 
to 10 owt. an acre, the results would bo immense, 
and there is no reason apparent at this time why 
coffee in Perak should not produce such crops as 
oofiee in Ceylon, India and Java has already done. 
In four ycara Arabian coffee may be expected to 
cover the ground and to be in full bearinp, pro- 
ducing a bean, which properly cured and shipped 
woulil fetch the extreme rates ruling in the markets 
of the world. Libtrian oofiee, on the other hand, 
takes seven to eight years to come into full bearing 
and to cover the ground, a large proportion of which 
in the meantime has to be kept clean and gives 
no return to the planter. The position of the 
estates in the hot steamy lowcountry naturally 
causes the weeds to grow up much faster than 
on the hills, and cocsequently the estate is more 
expensive to weed, and a larger extent of land has 
to be gone over for a lengthened period than in 
the cultivation of the other variety. Again the 
carriage of the cherry coffee on the heads of the 
coolies for considerable distances is always a matter 
giving trouble on coffee estates, and whereas 2J 
bushels of Arabian cherry give one bushel of 
parchment, it requires no loss than five bushels of 
Liberian cherry to turn out one of parchment, 
thus just doubling the weight that has to be carried 
about the estate — and doubling the trouble and 
ezpenae of its transport. After all, when the coffee 
is put on the home markets, Liberian fetches some 
15 to 20 shillings per ovL less than the Arabian. 
The difference has of late not been so marked 
simply because there has been little or none of 
the East Indian coffee to compete with Liberian, 
the value of the latter of course being altogether 
abnormal. Liberian has seldom or never touched 
the round 100 shillings per owt. whilst high giown 
Arabioa has gone as high as 150s, and good or- 
dinary has ruled llOs to 1203 for months at a time. 
^ There is no getting out of the fact that the 
Arabian variety is the more valuable and more 
easily manipulated of the two varieties, and in 
Perak the numerous roads already made and the 
railwayti, completed and in course of oonatruoticn, 
facilitate the opening up of the jungle. The labour 
supply just now is comparatively large, in oonae- 
quenco of the scarcity of food in India and the 
depression in the tobacco industry in Sumatra. 

EETURNS FKOM RICE CULTURE 
IN CEYLON. 
As Sir Arthur Havelock, in his speech at the 
Agricultural College Prize-giving, expressed so 
peesimietic a view of the returns from paddy 
culture in this island, we would draw His Ex- 
oellenoy's particular attention to the astcunding 
statement made by a very ocmpetent lulbority 
elsewbere. So badly is paddy preeerved 
(or so unripe is much of it when harvested) and 
BO little attsntion is paid to the selection of 
Bcod generally, that out of one, two or three 
buwhola Rowu, according to quality o( eoil, only 
one-fourth of a buthol, tt/ a iiuij-imitin, ever gotmi- 
nfttcH and rosuUs in grain-boaring plants I When 
to seed bo inferior as is thus indicated, oarelees and 
unscientific cultivation ie added, we need not wonder at 
poor returns obtained, but we may well protest against 
impeachment on this account of our natural conditions 
of soil, irrigation water and climate. In all the rice 
culture we saw in Java the seeds were germinated 
in nurBeries and planted out into the fields in re- 
gular rowi. Here such a system is exceptional, while 
what is called ploughing is really the mere stirring 
of a few inches of water-saturated mud. The 
advantages of superior ploughs would be that the 
land could be ploughed and pulverised when dry — 
subBoil being stirred without being brought to the 
surface. This and careful selection of seed would 
prevent waste of grain, now so enormous, while 
waste of water would also be prevented, much to 
the improvement of the grain produced. The im- 
pression left on our mind by this latest contribu- 
tion to the literature of paddy culture is, that 
where poor returns are tbp rule, it is not, in most 
oases soil and climate which are at fault, but 
perfunctory husbandry. 
WASTE m THE USE OF BUILDING 
MATERIAL. 
Our attention has been directed to the un- 
scientific way in which our native builders often 
dispose their material in the works of cjnstruotion 
undertaken by them. Amongst the people of this 
colony the study of architecture, not alone as an 
art but as a practical matter, is, aa yet, altogether 
unknown. It may be said, indeed, that as regards 
the first of these two aspects we have no architecture 
at all. The taste shown in the design of the 
ancient monuments left to us as the work of a 
bygfine age no longer survives, and an art which 
must at one time have flourished in this island 
in a high degree no longer exists among us. 
But it is to tho second aspect, that which most 
concerns us economically, that we would more 
Bpeoially direct attention. It cannot be said that 
in those ancient works to which we have referred 
there is evidence of such a disposition of material 
as would justify us in the assumption that the 
strength of its many varied forma had been the 
subject of intelligent consideration. The skill in 
architectural construction which distinguished the 
Arab builders, and which enabled them to so 
erect those light and graceful domes and 
the towering obelisks which form so essential 
a feature of Indian architecture, was apparently 
unknown to our own earlier designers. All their 
work, like that of the ancient Egyptians, was of so 
massive a character that they never cared, it 
would seem, to closely adapt their disposition gf 
material to the exact requirements they had to 
provide for. Like the Egyptians, it may be said that 
most of their constructive work was monolithic. 
They wedged out huge masses of stono, and 
applied them indiscriminately to support both great 
and triflinp weights. Much of this tendency re- 
mains to the present day, and wo think that in 
our schools for technical educatioa no branch of 
constructive art could better be studied than the 
adaptation of means to their ends, the study, in 
a word, both of tho strength of materials and of 
the strains to which they become subject under 
the many different conditions of their application. 
It is from the want of this knowledge, we feel 
sure, that so much of the waste of building 
material that is observable in all modern works 
of native construction is due. Nor can we exempt 
altogether our own Public Works Department 
from sharing in some degree in the same charge. 
Many of tho oflioern of that department, until re- 
