THE 
SGRicuLTURSL  msGszine, 
COLOMBO. 
Added  afi  a Sup/j/emenl  MimthJn  to  Ihr.  TROPICAL 
The  Collowiiig  pages  iuclude  the  Contents  nt’  the 
for  Feln-uary  : — 
Vol.  VTI.]  F^^l^UUAl^Y,  1890. 
AORTCTJrJURIST:' 
Agriailtn ral  Magazi ne 
[No.  8. 
GRAPF,  CUr/lhVATION  IN  COf.OMHO. 
vine  experiment  at  tlie  School 
of  Agriculture  continues  to  give 
n&M  satisfaction.  There  is  at  present  a 
small  crop  of  fruit — nearly  thirty 
bunches— maturing,  some  of  them 
being  of  the  black  variety.  The  vines  in  fruit 
were  planted  in  Colombo  at  the  begiuiiing  of 
August  last — about  6 months  ago— and  were  raised 
from  cuttings  planted  in  Australia  in  September^ 
1891,  so  that  they  are  now  only  18  mouths  old.  It 
is  therefore  far  t<X)  early  to  judge  of  the  fruiting 
capacity  of  the  new  varieties  of  the  grape  that 
M.  Zaiietd  has  introduced  in  Ceylon,  nor  of  the 
suitability  of  Colombo  for  their  successful  growth. 
In  the  beginning  of  .January  Mr.  A.  T.  Pearson,  who 
has  liad  considerable  e.xperience  of  fruit-growing 
in  Australia,  visited  tlie  vineyard  nt  the  School  of 
Agriculture,  and  his  opinion  of  the  experiment,  as 
given  in  an  interview”  published  in  the  7'me.?  of 
Ceylon,  is  decidedly  encouraging.  We  quote  the 
following  paragraph; — 
“ Mr.  Pearson  mentioned  that  he  had  been  out  to 
the  Agricultural  School  in  Colombo  an  1 inspected 
.Sig.  Zanetti’s  vines,  and  the  appearance  of  these 
liad  given  him  still  greater  encouragement.  He 
himself  had  undertaken  viticulture  in  Australia, 
and  ten  acres  of  his  land  at  Mildura  were 
planted  with  vines,  but  he  does  not  contemplate 
grape-growing  here.  He  says  that  he  should  have 
thought  Colombo  particularly  unsuitable  ; hut  he 
found  the  vines  as  healthy-looking  as  the  best 
he  had  seen  in  Australia,  and  he  does  not  know 
how  Sig.  Zanetti  has  got  over  the  difficulty 
of  peri)etual  summer,  mile.ss  Ire  has  bared  the 
roots  of  his  vines  and  so  introduced  artificial 
dormancy.  After  what  he  had  seen  in  Colombo, 
he  thinks  that  grapes  might  be  successfully  grown 
on  the  hills.” 
While  visiting  Matale  lately  we  took  the 
opportunity  of  inspecting  a vine  wdiich  we  saw 
last  August  carrying  u very  heavy  crop  of  fruit. 
On  our  recent  visit  the  vine  had  been  pruned 
early  in  December,  and  \vas  just  putting  out  new' 
leafage.  The  September  crop  had  given  half  a cwt. 
of  fruit,  and  after  the  taking  in  of  the  crop, — ^the 
vine,  whicli  had  .spread  over  a large  ‘ jjandal' — was 
subjected  to  an  artilicial  wintering  caused  by 
the  exposure  of  tlie  roots  for  7 or  8 days.  Since 
then  w'e  have  had  a visit  from  a gentleman  of 
Calpentyn  who  startled  us  with  the  results  of  his 
vine-growing  in  that  arid  clime.  He  said  he  had 
two  ‘ pandals,’  each  of  w'hich  carried  three  vines» 
and  that  he  got  a crop  of  1,000  lbs.  of  grapes  from 
each  pandal,  i.e.,  333  lbs  from  each  vine.  We 
presume  that  this  represented  the  annual  produce. 
We  were  further  told  that  each  bunch  of  grapes 
weighed  about  2 lbs.,  so  that  Calpentyn  must  be  a 
veritable  paradise  for  grape-growing.  The  cli- 
mate there  is  exceedingly  dry  (w'e  do  not  suppose 
that  the  annual  rainfall  could  be  much  more  than 
30  inches,  if  it  is  as  much  as  that),  and  it  is 
necessary,  we  were  told,  to  regularly  w'ater  the 
vines.  The  wonder  to  us  is,  why  grape  cultiva- 
tion is  not  carried  on  more  extensively  in  the 
Calpentyn  district.  Taking  only  50  vines  (on 
the  ‘ pandal’  system)  to  an  acre,  and  3^0  lbs.  per 
vine  as  a likely  annual  crop,  we  get  no  less  than 
15,000  lbs.,  which  at  50  cents  per  lb.  would  fetch 
7,500  rupees  ! 
