452 
THF TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[December i, 1890. 
quantity is useful, placed in water where logs of 
timber are seasoned ; and that, applied in quantity 
and directly, it gives a dark hue to the lightest 
coloured wood. 
I have read with interest and pleasure the very 
able letter, signed “ A.,” on Kioe Culture in Ceylon, 
proving that whatever the force of the sentiment 
of regard for “patrimonial inheritance” may be, it 
cannot possibly account for thousands of persons, 
year after year, being willing, or, even if they 
were willing, being able to continue an unremu- 
nerative pursuit. Eioe-growing must certainly be 
remunerative, according to the native standard of 
profit, or it would not be persevered in. As the 
writer points out, if the returns are not such as 
might be obtained by superior modes of cultivation, 
the pursuit suits native idiosyneraoy, because, if 
the results are moderate, so is the amount of 
physical labour necessary to obtain them : a few 
weeks of exceptional work and then months of the 
dearly loved dolce far iilente. The late Mr. James 
de Alwis went the length of saying that Euro- 
peans often did injustice to native cultivators 
from ignorance of their habits. “ Ye are idle I ye 
are idle 1 ” has been said of them when observed 
sleeping during the day hours, by persons who 
knew not that the preceding night had been spent 
in labour on the fields. And it is a fact that I 
have personally seen the Jafina cultivators busy 
raising water from wells and irrigating their fields 
on moonlight nights. The natives can work hard 
and continuously, occasionally, so as by the results 
of such labour spurt to secure the luxury of 
absolute idleness for lengthened periods. This, in 
a pursuit which is ordinarily remunerative, or it 
would be abandoned. But there can be no question 
that with steady industry applied to improved 
modes of culture, the pursuit would be far more 
remunerative and the condition of the cultivators 
far better and hnppier than is at present the case. 
That is, if to steady industry in improved cultiva- 
tion, provident habits were added. The object of 
the School of Agriculture and its alumni, the “ Agri- 
cultural Instructors," scattered over the country, 
and of gentlemen like Mr. Elliott, is to teach the 
people to increase the produce of their lands by 
improved methods of agriculture and by steady 
instead of spasmodic work, and also to inculcate 
such provident habits as saving seed-paddy from 
the proceeds of harvest, instead of paying, as many of 
them do, 50 per cent per crop season for its supply. 
If the landlord supplies the seed and receives it back 
with 50 per cent added, it will be acknowledged that 
this is unjust to the labourer, whose share is in 
proportion lessened. But in most oases the seed- 
paddy is supplied by outsiders, who also lend money 
for exorbitant interest on the mortgage of lands. 
This it is, the going into debt to usurious money- 
landers, which v/eighs down the cultivators here as 
in India, aqd which in the latter country has 
induced Government to pass exceptional laws, 
providing that in no case can the land be alienated, 
and arranging a system of money advances by 
Government to the cultivators at moderate interest, 
a system which our Government might well imitate. 
For the rates of interest charged by ordinary 
moneylenders are generally excessive and ruinous. 
In a large number of the oases of experimental 
land settlement by Mr. J, H. do Saram, the 
lands were mortgaged, in most instances to members 
of the “ great unpaid ” class, for sums on which 
lOi per cent interest (why the odd fraction ?) had 
to be paid. How can any ordinary enterprise 
boar such a rate, or the much higher rates which 
I believe are in many cases axactcdl While, 
therefore, it is certain that paddy cultivation pays 
fair returns, or it would be abandoned, it has 
bear burdens compared to which the Government' 
rent of less than 10 per cent is as nothing. The 
efforts of those who are labouring in a legitimate 
manner to improve the condition and lighten the 
self-imposed burdens of the goyiyas are, therefore, 
worthy of all encouragement and praise. 
MOISTUBE ON PLANTS MISTAKEN FOR DEW — FROST AND 
TEMPERATURE AT NDWARA ELIVA — THE DEPOSITION 
OF DEW— MIST EQUIVALENT TO RAIN — EFFECT OF 
DUST IN THE ATMOSPHERE — THE MIST LINE AND 
COFFEE— MIST AND HEALTH— FIGS — FINE WEATHER. 
Nanuoya, Nov. 14th, 
Now that the season is approaching, has indee^ 
arrived, when, according to the popular conundrum* 
the moisture which ascended from the earth for 
sun-dry reasons will descend in dew (due) time. 
Dr. Maepherson’s article in Longman's Magazine, 
embodying the results of the very interesting ex- 
periments by Mr. Aitken, f. r. s., of Falkirk, 
possesses special interest. It seems that moisture 
on plants, which for centuries has been mistaken 
for dew, is really exuded from the leaves by an 
amount of reserve energy in the roots, which in 
the case of healthy vegetation acta with a force 
quite remarkable. That the leaves of plants ex- 
uded moisture, especially when exposed to sunlight, 
has been long known, and the process was des- 
cribed by Boussingault in the case of mint. 
What Mr. Aitken has established, besides measur- 
ing the force with which the roots act, is that the 
moisture excreted from the leaves of grass and 
other plants in a healthy condition takes invari- 
ably the form of a drop (what in Scotland we 
call a blob) resting on the extremity of the leaf, 
and that such false dew exists when true dew, 
for which it has constantly been mistaken, is 
entirely absent. Wo have all been in the habit 
of crediting the atmosphere with depositing con- 
densed moisture, when in reality, the moisture 
has coma from the earth and has been forced up 
the stems of plants and out through the pores of 
healthy leaves "by a species of energy even more 
remarkable than that which enables some forms of 
mushrooms to upheave not only superincumbent 
earth but even heavy masses of stone. Dead or 
withered leaves never show this excreted mois- 
ture, but they can be “ wet with the dews of the 
night ; ” with moisture diffused over their whole 
surface. So with healthy leaves : in addition to 
the drops of excreted moisture at their points, 
their whole surface, and specially their lower sur- 
forces, can be renderd diffusively moist by true 
dew, which is always evaporated from the earth, 
that earth being ever warmer than the air in 
contact with it. If plants or stones or any 
substance on the earth’s surface have been ren- 
dered cold, or rather have been deprived of their 
warmth by the radiation of heat into space, 
the moisture coming warm from the earth is 
condensed on such cold objects, especially on 
their undersides ; the dew, in a very low tem- 
perature, taking the beautiful form of rime 
or hoar-frost. This is the explanation of the 
snow-white appearance so frequently assumed on 
cold, clear nights and mornings by the grassy 
plains of Nuwara Eliya, in the winter months of 
November, December, January, February, and March, 
—the cold, or rather the abstraction of heat, being 
there intensified by the evaporation of swamp 
moisture as well as the radiation of heat. In 
February and March the mean nocturnal temperature 
at our Sanatorium is 7 deg. below the mean shade 
temperature : that is the mean nightly temperatures 
for those months is 50 deg. and 51 deg., against 
