194 
THE T«DP1C51IL /SBBFWBOLtORlST- [September t, 1890 . 
years were touching one another and gave a maiden 
crop of 160 lb. per acre. My flower garden and 
vegetable garden were highly successful; nothing 
was blighted, nothing failed to grow. And the cacao 
grew equally well on level ground and in hollows, 
on slopes and on ridges, better without shade than 
with it, if only sufficiently protected from wind. 
I have seen it growing well in those days up to 2,000 
feet elevation in poor quartzy soil. 
As I had a large reserve, I selected land every year 
to extend the cultivated area. My clearings were 
equally successful in the north-east and the south-west 
monsoons ; many parts never had to be supplied at 
all, the failures being ntf,* 
On May 1st, 1884, on visiting an estate near 
Folgahawela, I saw for the first time the signs of 
what 1 thought to be a serious blight or disease ; 
large-sized trees looking as if they were scorched by 
fire, the ends of the branches dead or dying. The 
superintendent told me that, to make sure whether 
it was due to helopeltis, or not, he had covered 
one of the few remaining healthy trees after careful 
fumigation with fine gauze, but that the tree, _ after 
some days, had shown the same signs of disease 
while nowhere on it could any signs of helopeltis 
be discovered. There were two nurseries in close 
proximity, one of the ordinary Ceylon kind, the other of 
the hardy variety called Forastero ; the first was in a 
miserable state of disease, the other perfectly healthy. 
Not many months had elapsed before this disease 
had spread in several districts, and a meeting was 
held in Kandy, with the ordinary result that every- 
one who had an opinion went away with it, without 
converting or being converted by his neighbour. 
But the catching of helopeltis and the planting 
of shade were generally thought to be the panacea. 
Forastero and hybrid varieties were not then attacked, 
and many planters used only those kinds for sup- 
plying or for planting new fields. 
But to come back to my personal experience. It 
was only in 1885 that 1 noticed the first signs of 
disease in my fields, and by the end of that year 1 
had made up my mind that I should soon see the 
end of my enterprise, such was the virulence of 
the attack, and I was not very far wrong. 
I have made experiments with manures : digging, 
forking, holing, trenching ; with quicklime and 
gaslime, with sulphates of copper and iron, arsenic, 
corrosive sublimate, with kerosine &c., without suc- 
cess. The only palliative is shade, and the best is the 
dadap, which was introduced some years ago from 
Assam by a Dimbula planter and by him first planted 
as shade for cacao.t 1 say that shade is only a pallia- 
tive with good reason, because it only mitigates the 
disease. Near Folgahawela the cacao under shade 
was severely attacked as well as that in the open, 
but when the shade trees were cut down three or 
four years ago and tea planted the cacao recovered 
and has since given good crops. 
Since the year 1885, all my attempts at 
planting any 'products, in the best of soils, with 
good weather and with greater care than formerly 
nave been comparative failures. The weeds them- 
selves as well as the jungle trees and the under- 
growth of the forest show unmistakable signs of 
sterility. The Forastero cacao, which for a time 
* A neighbouring plantation gave in 1883-84 a crop 
of 4 owt. per acre over 200 acres planted in 1878-79. 
The trees, planted 9' x 9', were interlacing so much 
that it was thought necessary to sacrifice the alternate 
ones, and shade trees were in some places thinned, with 
good reason as the cacao in the open was growing 
much better. 
t Mr. Kobert Fraser’s introduction of the beet 
erythrmas from Trinidad must surely have been 
anterior to the import of the Assam “ dadap ’’—the 
Java Dame for erytbrioa being “ dadap,”— Bn.’ T. 4. 
had resisted the disease, followed suit, and trees 
of the ordinary Ceylon kind, which were known to 
have given good crops regularly for twelve years, 
were attacked and very soon became barren skeletons. 
In your “ Ceylon Directory ” of 1883-84, p. 40, 
you state ; — “ As regards the area planted in 1877-78, 
it was 500 acres : in March 1881 this had increased 
to 5,460 acres, and this area in three years has 
increased by 4,500 acres, and from the 10,000 acres 
now growing (at end of 1883) of this valuable pro- 
duct we may look for an export of 50,000 owt, 
before Sir Arthur Gordon’s term of office expires. 
Of cacao planted alone the area is 4,711 acres ; of 
coffee and cacao planted together we have 10,709 
acres ” (or a total of 15,420 acres). 
If we admit that cacao gave generally its first 
crop of 1 cwt. at four years of age, of 3 cwt. at five 
years, of 4 owt. at six years, and after that age 5 
owt. per acre, we find the following table : — 
Cacao Planted. 
Acres 
Owt. 
1876 .. 
. 122 
gave in 
1879-80 
122 
1877 .. 
. 113 
1880-81 plus the above 
479 
1878 . 
191 
1881-82 
9) 
1,018 
1879 . 
. 1,953 
9) 
1882-83 
99 
3,588 
1880 . 
. 2,065 
18S3-84 
9 > 
9,863 
Thus the 5,460 acres said to have been in cultivation 
in March 1881 ought under the same circumstances 
to have given in 1884-85 a crop of 17,153 cwt., but 
the exports fell to 6,758 owt. I With a large yearly 
increase of land coming into bearing, the highest 
export (1886-87) was only 16,638 cwt., and the 
acreage has fallen, by your latest computation, from 
15,420 at the end of 1883 to 11,772 acres, although 
new land has been opened yearly (1,500 acres 
would be a moderate estimate). This would have 
brought up the acreage planted with cacao to 16,920 
acres, so that 5,548 acres must have been abandoned 
almost before they had come into bearing. 
If now we assume that of the 11,772 acres only 
10,000 are in bearing this season, now nearly ended, 
we shall find from the exports that the average 
crop this year is only a little over IJ cwt, per acre, 
which shows conclusively that cacao cultivation 
is not an ELDORADO. 
[This tale of disappointed hope is only one of 
many in regard not only to cacao but to Liberian 
coffee and cinchona. In certain select or fortunate 
localities, however, cacao seems still to flourish. 
—Ed. T. a.] 
DAVIDSON’ SIROCCOS: PRACTICAL HINTS. 
Colombo, July 21st. 
Dear Sib, — With reference to “Darjeelingite” ’s 
query taken from the Indian Planters' Gazette of 
the 1st July, re difficulty in working a large-sized 
Down-draft Sirocco, I have much pleasure in giving 
him the required information. In the first place 
he says, “ I find that the temperature drops from 385 
deg. to 210 deg. before it hits the tea on the lowest 
tray. I also find that it takes 6 maunds of dry 
wood to each maund of tea, that it does not turn 
out anything like 2 maunds per hour. 
“P.S. — I do not find that it puts price on tea, 
it only enables you to dry with other material 
than charcoal.” 
The temperature at which “ Darjeelingite ” is 
working is very much too high. Pure hot air cannot 
be passed through tea roll at the same high tem- 
perature as the charcoal furnishes from a chula. 
A pure hot air tea drier worked at 385 deg. F. will 
in the first place consume a large amount of fuel, 
and in the second will not produce a high quality 
of tea. But with the Down-draft Sirocco it is 
utterly impossible to raise the temperature over the 
