September i, 1890.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. i93 

To the Editor. 
PEPPER CULTIVATION AND JAK TREES 
IN THE KANDY DISTRICTS. 
July 9th. 
Deab Sik, — Y our correspondent “ Peppercorn,” 
in his letter of 4th inst , remarks that “ a good 
healthy pepper vine is found to be more than a 
match for a sturdy jak tree, and seems to be 
capable of sucking the life out of it.” Where has 
he lately found the sturdy jak ? I am afraid that 
most planters in the Kandy districts will concur 
in my opinion that since 1885 a healthy jak tree 
has been hard to find : every one of them has been 
in a more or less debilitated condition, with 
jaundiced foliage and dead and dying branches, 
and some trees, even without pepper being grown 
up them, have died outright. 
A V. A. with some knowledge of botany might 
have been expected by this time to have noticed 
their condition, and to have suggested offhand 
a remedy ; but the common planter is at present 
in doubt whether the decadence of jak trees is 
due to the ravages of cockchafer grubs, to borers, 
to abnormal weather, to root canker, or to the new 
mysterious complaint called ‘ mal-nutrition.’ We 
appeal to the press,* — Yours faithfully, 
SIC PASSIM. 
“ £20,000 ANNUAL LOSS TO CEYLON PLAN- 
TERS THROUGH carelessness IN TEA 
FACTORIES.” 
London, July 18th. 
Deab Sib, — Take a crop of 40,000,000 lb. tea equal 
to 400,000 chests. Two-thirds of this equals say 
260,000 chests. The dock charge for taring is 
Is 6d, and bulking and taring Is 8d per chest, and it 
is computed that quite two-thirds of the Ceylon 
crop has to undergo one or both operations in the 
London warehouses, and putting this proportion 
at 260,000 chests the above enormous sum (twenty 
thousand pounds) approximates the charge incurred. 
Why is it Superintendents and Factory Assis- 
tants are so careless in these matters of good 
bulking and even taring of their chests ? 
It can be no great hardship to see that the chests 
of a break do not vary more than 2 or 3 lb. 
in their tares, and nailing on pieces of wood or 
shaving the chests here and there as may be 
required to obtain even weights. Factory bulking 
is useless if tares are uneven, for frequently when 
a break has passed the bulking ordeal the Customs 
order is, to be turned out and separately tared, 
the charge for which, as shown, is only 3d per 
chest less than the charge for bulking. 
As to factory bulking, it is often most care- 
lessly done, and a break of say 50 chests pekoe 
often exhibits three distinct teas ; yet all are marked 
“ Factory Bulked ” and shipped home as one tea. 
These irregularities, which add so much to Lon- 
don dock charges, are easily preventible, and care- 
lessness is practically their only origin. 
MERCHANT AND PROPRIETOR. 
GREEN TEAS FROM CEYLON. 
Kintyre, Maskeliya, July 19th. 
Deab Sir, — The extract to which you give pro- 
minence in your paper of 17th from Messrs. Geo. 
* Or rather to Dr. Xiimen, if theie are any such 
suffering '* jak trees” in his neighbourhood.— En. T. A. 
25 
White* Co.’s circular might lead your readers to 
suppose that it was all u. p. with Green Teas as a 
class. As a matter of fact the three lowest grades 
were sold, viz., pekoe souchong, fannings and dust at 
an average of 10|d; the average of all blaet teas being 
10a i\d. For the 65 percent of fine teas unsold 
the bids ranged from Is 7|d to Is l|d against 
valuations from Is 9d to Is 2d. I think the bids 
should have been accepted, but even with a still 
farther fall of 21 or even 3d per pound, the break 
would still be above the average of black teas of 
that week. It will be interesting to know the prices 
fecthed for the two finest grades of green tea sold 
by me locally on 16th June for which Sic and 
70c were paid, exchange at about Is 6d at that 
date, — Yours faithfully, dear sir, H. D. DEANE. 
GAMBIER. 
July 19 th. 
Dear Sie, — I was glad to read the interesting 
particulars you gave about gambier, but still the native 
name has not transpired. I am anxious to get this 
to make my own experiments. Now that Dr. Trimen 
has got plants of the Singapore gambier, he is in a 
position to define the botanical difference between 
the indigenous and exotic. 
Christy in his book No. 5 on Tanning Materials 
says that in Malacca the better kind (cube gambier) 
is prepared more carefully, and to insure consistency (?) 
starch or some kind of farina is mixed with it to con- 
solidate it and dry it more easily. 
If starch were mixed with a dark extract it would 
tend to lighten the color, and if such admixture is 
permitted by the trade I can quite understand that 
producers would only too readily resort to it, gambier 
being about three times the value of starch. 
Christy also says that as imported into England in 
its rough state it is very much adulterated, sticks, 
stones, and large quantities of elephant’s dung being 
mixed with it in the manufacture. PLANTER. 
CACAO CULTIVATION; PRACTICAL 
EXPERIENCE. 
Dear Sir, — I have often heard and seen such erro« 
neous ideas expressed about the profits of cocoa or 
rather cacao cultivation in this island that I wish to 
give my experience, with some statistics taken from 
your valuable Directory, for the benefit of those who 
may think of embarking in this pursuit, believing it 
to be very profitable and, as I have somewhere read, a 
“ grandchildren’s patrimony.” 
I came here in 1878 with a certain amount of 
capital, and after careful investigation concluded 
that I could not do better than invest in the 
cultivation of cacao. The conditions of the land on 
which I commenced operations were exactly those 
said to be required by the manuals on the subject : 
Messrs. Jardine and Barber’s wealth of information 
was not then available. The soil was generally a 
good chocolate loam, three to five feet deep, and the 
land well-watered, one of the streams having rich 
alluvial banks : elevation from 400 to 900 feet ; the 
average annual rainfall 90 inches fairly distributed; 
and the land well-sheltered from wind by ranges of 
hills and by no means steep. Part of the land had 
many years previously been for a short time under 
coffee, part was jungle or heavy forest. The land 
was opened in 1879 m the ordinary way, many of the 
jungle trees being left for shade wherever required. 
My expectations were for a long time fulfilled : 
everything grew with truly tropical luxuriance, even 
the Arabian and Liberian coffee of which I had 
planted a small quantity. As for cardamoms, their 
growth was marvellous : planted in the open without 
any shade whatever, and without any holes being 
out, the plants, nine feet apart, at the age of two 
