Vol. X. 
COLOMBO, MAY ist, 1891. 
[No. 11. 
TEA AND COFFEE IN CEYLON. 
UPS AND DOWNS— CONTEADIOTOEY EXPEEIKNCES — 
FAEMING VICISSITUDES IN ENGLAND. 
iST mail brought us the 
following pertinent oritici-in 
ami enquiries and interesting 
notes from a Ceylon proprie- 
tor now at home. They will 
be read with attention by 
planters, especially the in- 
formation given about farms in England : — 
“The Ceylon Observer of the 5th Feb. has been 
my study today, and I am much struck with the 
conflicting accounts of the tea and coffee industries. 
Why should the proprietors of Brae group part 
with their apparently valuable property for £4,500, 
when the Yatiyantota Company can pay 25 per 
cent dividend ? Unless I am much mistaken Mr, 
Hugh Fraser was specially complimented in your 
columns of the Observer on his good fortunes in 
Brae ?* Again in Haputale bug is reported to bo 
disappearing and some quite phenomenal crops are 
reported — thousands of bushels in fact. Accounts 
from Madulsima however show that bug is very 
bad on the small acreage of coffee left. A similar 
report comes from Udapussellawa.f Wilson and 
Smithett have just sent me a sample of some 
(Uva) peaberry which made 136s per cwt 
This is 9s. over the highest price, which 
(Uva) coffee ever made, when comparatively healthy. 
From what my manager says, however, I cannot 
think that coffee will ever pay for money 
bestowed upon it. A crop is a mere chance. 
“Cinchona seems to have become like a broken 
reed— end no wonder, when quinine is quoted at 
lid pe r oz .l I believe chem ists still charge from 
* True, and Brae in tea lias done well and promised 
to do better; but Mr. Fraser bad nbsontee p.irtuers 
who wished to real v.o, we believe.— tEd. T, .1. 
t True again : Haputale coffee is wonderfully free 
from bug, while it is very prevalent beyond the 
patauas ou Udapussellawa coffee at present,— E». T,A< 
3s 6d to 5s. When do you think that wo shall 
have a railway into the heart of Uva ? Is it not 
nearly 20 years since the first agitation ? Enough 
to break stout hearts.” 
j [Yes indeed : our first Memorial was in 1872, but 
our correspondent will bo glad to hear that the 
line — not merely to Haputale, but to Bandarawala 
with a new and fairly level road to Bassara — should 
be open by September 1892. — Ed. T- A-] 
“What very poor prices, they eeem for estates in 
tea compared to the prices paid for coffee estates in 
our prosperous days, such as Monaragala £70,C00, 
Wallaha £27,000, old Sylvakande £15,000, Alice Holt 
Group £75,000, Ceylon Plantations Co. Group 
£60,000, Doomoo £14,0C0, Forest Hill ditto, 
Yapame £18,000, and jungle at E280 per acrel 
“All I can say is that these vicissitudes are not pecu- 
liar to Ceylon. The finest grazing land in England 
can bo bought at about £30 to £40 per acre — very 
often 20 years purchase on the reduced rents — 
and land in Essex is at this present moment 
abandoned. It is like a jungle, and homesteads 
and cottages are falling into ruins. 
“I have just been over a farm of 88 acres in 
this county which let at £150 and £130, and 
the rent is now £60 per annum. The outgoings 
are about £30 p. a. The craze is laying down 
land to pasture to escape expenses, and over a 
great deal of this land one can “ whip a mouse” 
at all seasons. 
“Farmers and peasantry are being rapidly ruined, 
and the ‘Deserted Village’ is no poetic imagination.” 
BAD TEA SENT FROM AMERICA 
TO AUSTRALIA. 
A telegram in an Australian paper, dated 
Melbourne, March 5, runs : — 
Two hundred and fifty chrsts of bad tea per 
“Tsinan” have been returned from Sydney. The 
tea wa.s shipped in the United States and was recently 
condemned in Blelbourne. It is urderstcod that the 
United States Consul will prevent the tea from being 
lauded in the United States. 
A Geejian inventor proposes to make boots with 
stone soles. He mixes with a waterproof glue a 
suitable quantity of clean quartz sand, which ia 
spread on the thin leather sole employed as a 
foundation. These quartz soles are said to be flexible 
and almost indestruotible, while they enable the 
wearer to walk safely over slippery roads. — Ex.— 
IiuUarubber Journal, 
