496 
THE TROPICAL AQRICULTUmST 
[January i, 1891 
Black Isle (Eilandhu) of Eoss-shire were redeemed 
by the application of clay found close at hand and 
lime imported from “ the South.” The clay from 
which bricks have been made at Nuwara Eliya 
could be utilized for redeeming the peat land, and 
if some of the clay as well as some of the peat 
could be burnt and the carbonized matter or 
ashes applied as a surface dressing, so much the 
better, I venture to say. And some of the super- 
fluous peat in the swamps throwm up from deep 
drains could also be used with advantage in forming 
composts for the Nuwara Eliya vegetable and fruit 
gardens and even the tea estates. There can be 
no better absorbent of excrementitious and am- 
moniacal matters than dried peat, or peat ashes, 
In the work I have referred to the constituents of 
a peat compost are thus given : — 
Dry earthy peat ... 40 bushels. 
Ammoniacal liquor from gas works 20 gallons. 
Bone dust ... 7 bushels. 
Sulphate of magnesium ... 1 cwt. 
Sulphate of sodium ... 7 bush els. 
Common salt ... IJ cwt. 
Quicklime ... 20 bushels. 
These materials were, by a Mr. Fleming, mixed 
together and put into a heap, allowed to heat and 
ferment for 3 weeks, then turned and allowed 
again to ferment, when the compost was ready for 
use. On referring to the Penny Cyclopedia, I find 
that eighty years ago Lord Meadowbank gave 
directions for a rich peat compost, by means of 
alternate layers of peat and farmyard manure, 
rotten fish and other animal matter of 
all kinds being added and lime or ashes being 
scattered over the heap before being covered up 
to ferment. The principles in each case are the 
same, the special value of the peat consisting in its 
absorbent qualities. 
The great object in Nuwara Eliya, of course, will 
bo to convert the swamps into grass lands ; meadows 
or lawns ; and for this purpose, drainage and 
levelling will constitute the main preparations, a 
comparatively slight surface application of lime and 
clay sufficing. For the cultivation of vegetables 
and of fruit and ornamental trees, more elaborate 
and expensive treatment may be necessary. The 
peaty formations near Colombo were in the 
coffee factories used, mixed with coffee chaff, 
for steam engine furnaces, and the peaty stuffs in 
Nuwara Eliya and upcountry generally might be 
useful in tea factories, if compressed in moulds, 
turned out and dried like bricks, or rather like 
the forms in which fuel peat is prepared in so many 
parts of the world. Peat might also be used to absorb 
and deodorize petroleum, when used as a fuel. 
Peat-litter is valuable in stables and when thus 
saturated with ammoniacal matter as manure for 
gardens. Peat is largely humus ; and moist humus, 
or the water in which humus is dissolved, is a 
powerful dissolvent of mineral matters. Hence peat 
would rapidly assimilate bones, coprolites, pieces of 
limestone tVc. Peat used as litter in stables or for 
closets would act not only as an absorbent but as 
a deodorent. Peat after being used in closets and 
urinals has produced wonderful results in orchards 
•and vineyards. It follows that if peat is to be 
cultivated in situ, the more of ammoniacal matter, 
with potash, lime and phosphates, that can bo 
added, the better. That peat, especially such peat 
as wo have in Ceylon, contains all tlio elements 
of plant life, as I have seen asserted in articles read 
1)7 mo for the purpose of this notice, I do not believe. 
What I do believe is that by the abstraction of 
moisture, by aeration and the addition of mineral 
matter in the shape of clay (or forest mould) 
lime, ashes, bones Ac., the carboniferous substance 
can be converted into rich orchard soil or beautiful 
and profitable meadow land. 
_ While I am writing, a letter and specimens of 
cinchona and tea leaves are sent up from “the lower 
division,” to show the effects of the hail which I 
mentioned as aocompanyino the thunder, rain and 
cyclonic wind-storm of Friday last, when the 
cooties complained that the crystals of eongeeled 
moisture “ burnt their feet.” On the upper portion 
of the estate no appreciable damage seems to have 
been done, but here is the report from 1,000 feet 
further down in the valley of the Dimbuldanda, 
where the small tornado was more violent even 
than what we experienced : — 
“I send some twigs of cinchona and tea to show 
you wbat damage the hailstones did. I was extremely 
disgusted to see the tea bnshes looking so shuck in 
places this morning, and at first could not make out 
what it meant. Fortunately the storm must have 
passed over the place in wavy s'reaks as only occa- 
sional patches are much injured, otherwise the damage 
might have been very serious. As it is we may feel its 
effects for a little, though not to any great extent, 
I hope. I can now understand wbat a severe hailstorm 
means to our Indian friends. The young soft leaves 
on the tea see7n to suffer less than the old hard 
ones. A few which I enclose look as if they hud 
been at Waterloo,” 
The writer might well think of the effeots of showers 
of shot in battle, for the cinchona and tea leaves 
which accompanied the letter are riddled and torn 
after a fearful fashion, as you will see from the speci- 
mens I enclose. The first block of this estate (Abbots- 
ford) was purchased just a score of years ago this 
month ; and during the whole of its history since, we 
have had no such visitation as is now recorded. 
We have heard stories of big hailstones elsewhere 
which we considered apocryphal in some of their 
sensational details; especially a tale from Haputaleof 
lumps which remained unmelted for a couple of days 
in the coolies’ lines ; but we now believe in the potent 
reality of hail, the product of the ‘‘ long-looked- for- 
oome-at last ” electricity? or of the sudden fall 
of cold air from the higher air into the lower, owing 
to sudden and limited local atmospheric depression ? 
Curiously enough Blanford, in his work on the 
climates of India and Ceylon, says nothing about 
the formation of bail, which is frequent and 
destructive to tea plantations in the valley of the 
Brahmaputra and elsewhere in Assam, while in 
Northern India the hailstones are sometimes of such 
a size as to kill large numbers of cattle and even 
prove fatal to human beings who have been exposed 
to their violenes. Hartwig, in his “Aerial World ” 
states that in temperate climates hail slorms are 
frequent on the plains, while in tropical countries 
hail rarely occurs under 1,800 feet altitude ? Hail 
in the mountain region of Ceylon seems more 
prevalent on the eastern or north east-monsoon- 
side, than on the western ; the phenomenon being 
not uncommon in Uva, where it has sometimes 
occurred on a scale which involved considerable 
damage to crops, Hartwig in his “ Aerial World ” 
states : — 
“ Hail is beyond all doubt one of the mo.st enig- 
uiatical atm( sph''riral ptienomeua, as it is one of the 
most destructive, No meteorologist has been able )'-et 
(o explain in a peifeotly satisfactory manner how hail- 
stones of sucli cons’d rabla size are able to form in 
thi> cloud.s in so short a tinio, and often in the most 
sultry weather. On Voltats Theory the liailstones are 
successively attrac'ed by two clouds charged with 
opposite electricities, and thus grow until they fall; 
Imt if the hailstones were thus attracted, it seems 
much more probable that the two clouds would be 
mutually attracted and would unite. 
“ The sudden irruption of cold air streams into a 
hot atmosphere charged wiih aqueous vapour, ortho 
rarefaction and consequent refrigeratioa of the air 
produced by the rotary winds, have likewise, been 
(■■ailed in to explain the mysteries of hail; but the 
most sagacious theories have hitherto found more 
