i6o 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTORISI. 
[Sept, i, 1897 . 
fov less th.an three 1 One natnia! ellect of this 
great activity has been to send up tlie price ot 
labour. Coo'ly labour now costs 5 annas per 
diem, and many of the managers are bitterly 
complaining about tlie contractors and the 
difficulty of recovering advances. A curious and 
significant incident in connection with famine 
laliour may be mentioned here. Sir John Muir 
olVered to employ a gang of 500 Cuddapah famine 
coolies. Scarcely had they arrived at Muiiaar 
than in spite of good wages and a cool climate 
a great part of them absconded. Government 
work on famine dole in a parched-ui) country was 
pleasanter to them than hard woik in a stiangc 
country at double the wages. The incident is 
sio-nilicant of the apathy of the Indian cooly, who 
piofers dying at home to working in a distant 
ilistrict. 
It may be safely calculated that in two or 
three years’ time there will be .about 25,000 acres 
of forest planted out on these hills, yiekliug a 
produce of not less than 5,000 tons annually, ex- 
clusive of traffic in rice, and other supplies. A 
very large portion of this must find its \vay to 
the (Juu'ibum Valley for transport to luticoiin, 
the nearest harbour, arid would go a long way 
towards providing a dividend for the electric rail- 
way which ought to be constructed there. At 
present there is no agency on the hills, and not 
even a shop. All money for payment to coolies, 
stores, rice, suirplies, &c., are sent from Madras, 
the money either in specie or in notes at consider- 
able inconvenience and loss of time. Here again 
would seem to be an opportunity which Madras 
lirms would do well not to lose.— J/. Mail, June 30. 
TEA IN COORG. 
Sir, — In your issue of the 25 ih June, in the 
course of some editorial remarks on the proceedings 
of the Annual General Meeting of the Coorg Planters” 
Association, you state;—” Thus one more coffee dis- 
trict has succumbed to favourable prospects held out 
by tea, and very soon we may expect to see Coorg 
in the' transition stage from coffee to tea in which 
Wynaad and the Nilgiris and some other districts 
now are.” Kindly allow me to suggest that the sen- 
tence as it stands would lead one to infer that the 
cultivation of tea is rapidly displacing that of coffee 
in South India — whereas, if you will kindly refer 
to the latest statistics of the Planting Industry 
collected by Planting Opinion, or by theU. P. A. S. I., 
you v/ill see that king coffee not only reigns supreme, 
but seems bent on maintaining his supremacy, to judge 
from I he large extensions made, and the new districts 
that are being conquered, since the nineties began. 
Only Travancore figures as far more a tea than a 
coffee district ; but this has been its condition 
for years past, I believe. The tea planted in the 
districts of the Nilgiris, Mysore, Wynaad, Coorg, 
Puluies, Ac. is either nil, or very small iu extent, 
except un the Nilgiris. On the Nilgiris there 
has always been, concurrently with coffee, a fair 
arei of tea cultivated. The same -in Wynaad, but 
to 0 . very small extent only, until recently, when 
lands, years ago proved unsuitable for coffee, are 
now being to some extent reclaimed by tea ; but 
to say that Wynaad and the Nilgiris are in the 
transition stage from coffee to tea is altogether 
contrary to facts, as it implies that the culti- 
vati n of coffee ii being given up for that of tea. 
The cultivation of tea is extending, it is true, 
but it by no means follows that it is going to, 
or, for that matter, is intended, to displace 
coffee. On some very old coffee land, or on 
Ian I more or less originally iinauited for 
coffee it may do so, and thereby prove 
a valuable adjunct to coffee. Nor can I see that the 
way tea is mentioned in the Report of the proceed- 
ings of the Coorg Planters’ Association warrants the 
inference that Coorg expects to be in a transition 
stage from coffee to tea. I am sure, most planters 
will have read your remarks with much surprise. 
We have had two most erratic, and quite uncommon, 
flowering seasons, first, in the unprecedented drought 
of the spring of 1896 — a good deal worse than the 
prolonged drought of 1895, — followed by a want of 
seasonable cold weather iu 1896-1897 after quite 
abnormal rains in the fall of 1896 and early rains this 
spring so soon as February last ; but I have yet to 
meet the man who, in the face of the vigour and 
health of the coffee tree of today, and of its most 
rapid recovery from an attack of leaf disease a few 
mouths back, the like of which I do not think the 
districts have been visited with since 1891, and who 
has an estate worth anything, is prepared calmly 
to sit down, and begin to count up the cost of con- 
verting his property into tea on the ground that 
his coffee is not going to bear any more. I have 
beard of one man who did this, some years ago, 
and then within 18 months picked one of the best 
crops his place ever gave, and it is still going strong ! 
— .1/. Mail, July 1. Sempkr Flore.\t. 
THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. 
Mr. Woodford, in the course of hi.s sojjurns, found 
some difficuUy iu getting at tenn.s with the natives 
owing to the number of dialacts. Fijian, liowever, 
appears to be very similar in rojts and inflections, 
and in this language the Commissioner could generally 
make himself intelligible. The natives themselves 
live on very easy fare. One of their principal foods 
is a pjrepanation of sago flour and pounded almonds. 
This they bake into cakes. “These cakes.’ Mr. 
Woodford testifies, ” are most excellent and sustaining 
food. From their portability they are taken by the 
natives upon canoe voyages, as they are not liable 
to damage by salt water and, moreover, are most 
convenient to sit upon.” Many more interesting things 
does Mr Woodford tell about the Protectorate and 
the people. The trade, which is done entirely by 
Sydney merchants, is mainly in copra {dried half- 
ooeonuts from which oil is extracted), ivory nuts (the 
fruit of the sago palm used chiefly for making but- 
tons), and pearl and turtle shells. Mr. Woodford, who 
has visited the islands before has great belief in the 
possibilities tf a larger trade in the future, and con- 
siders that capital might be profitably expended in 
the growing and gathering of indiarubljer, sago, 
sponges, and certain timbers. The European popula- 
tion, though it numbers only fifty souls, is growing 
with the prospects of increased trade. In the 
Solomons, as in other island groups of the Pacific 
Oceania, the B itish Protectorate does not cover 
the whole Archipelngo. The northern islands are in 
the German sphere of influence. But the Teutons 
have imposed such taxation, in the way of licence 
fees and export duties, that the traders in the British 
Protectorate have practically given up visiting the 
islands north of the line of demarcation.— Scotsman, 
June 10. 
CACAO DISEASE. 
Mr. E. E. Green, wlio is natxtrally much in- 
terested in this matter, writes in answer to our 
enquiry : — 
“ As for the ‘ poochie ’ theory, neither my own 
observations nor any aigmneiits brought forward by 
any correspondents, at all tend to shake my belief 
in the independent nature of the disease. But I 
keep myself quite open to fresh evidence and hope 
that personal examination iu the vaulous affected 
districts will settle the matter one way or the o;her. 
Mr. Van Der Poorten’s argument in favour cf the 
‘ poochie ’ theory, is merely' that ‘ the dead wood 
is full of beetles, and tljat they are often at- 
tracted in the large quantities by light.’ Tliis is 
extremely probable ; but is as easily explicable by 
the fact that these boring beetles are always at- 
