THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 
399 
Dec. I, 1897 .] 
CHILLIES. 
A correspondent writes During tlie past few 
months the prices of all food-stn(fs ha,ve increased 
considerably, and notable among them are dry 
chillies, which some little time ago sold for 12 c. 
a lb., now the market price ha,s risen to 25c. 
a lb. ! It is a matter to be e.xplainefl why Ceylon 
with its thou.sands of acres of available land, 
should be dependent on the neighbouring Con- 
tinent for this indispensable commodity. The 
cultivation of chillies is not new to the Sinhale.se 
villager, almost every garden has a small plot 
planted with it and in many places where the 
crop is large a portion of it, in its fresh state, 
finds its way to onr vegetable markets or is 
hawked about for sale by basket- women, but 
the process of drying and preserving the fruit, 
as it is done in India is foreign to the Sinhalese. 
The cultivation of the plant is not attended 
with any difficulty and does not require any 
.special care. The requisite fertilizers being cattle- 
dung and dried kc|ipettiya leaves [croton lacci- 
feruni.) Many years ago the late Sir Kichard 
Morgan tried the e.xperiment by [danting some 
40 acres of land in Veyangoda — he imported a few 
skilled labourers from India for the purpose, and 
if I remember rightly his ex|)eriment was a 
f.ailure owing to his plants being attacked by 
poochies — perhaps some one who knows more of 
this undertaking may be able to give other 
r articulars. 
NEW SYSTEM OF WITHEUING 
TEA LEAF. 
With a rising exchange and increasing cost of 
production, planters are not likely to be slow in 
their appreciation of machinery designed with a 
view to labour-saving economy, and inventors are 
very alert just now in regard to all that affects 
the manufacture of tea. Last week there appeared 
in our advertisement columns some particulars of 
an apparatus for withering tea introduced by Mr, 
Edward Bobinson. As it is our province to give 
details of all tea machinery coming within our 
knowledge, we give alike for the benefit of the tea 
planters and other inventors of machinery a de- 
scription of this apparatus, together with a state- 
ment of the claim made on its behalf by the in- 
ventor, who mentions that working models of his 
invention have been on view for some time in the 
City, and are still to be seen on application to him. 
He aldo mentions that a complete installation has 
been sent out to Ceylon and will be set to work 
without delay, and that a large number of planters 
have inspected his working model, and opinions 
highly favourable to this new departure have been 
expressed. He points out that an important part of 
the system has already been thoi'oughly tested in 
practice and has proved a remarkable success namely 
— the arrangements for producing and evenly dis- 
tributing large volumes of warm wind. Some forty 
installations of this special apparatus are, it is men- 
tioned, at work, and there are excellent testimonials 
respecting it. Having thus been able to secure 
in large buildings the exact conditions necessary 
for successful tea withering, the inventor has 
turned his attention to this widely-felt requirement, 
and has designed and patented an arrangement of 
swinging trays which he claims is not only very 
simple, but which introduces a distinctly new idea 
into the practice of using trays as spreading surfaces 
for withering. The new method may be briefly de- 
scribed thus : Strong trays, having each an area of 
thirty to forty square feet, and made with a frame 
of round iron, covered with wire netting, and all 
galvanised, are attached on one side by means of 
staples to a strong angle-iron framework. They are 
fixed about four inches apart, and will swing about 
from one side to the other like the leaves of a book. 
To the side opposite the hinge-liko attachment ropes 
are fastened, which ropes are connected to a con- 
tinuous roller or v/indlass, carried overhead and sup- 
ported by angle-iron uprights. The windlass is 
worked by a worm-wheel gearing, so that a boy can 
easily raise up a whole row of trays at once. On 
commencing to spread leaf the whole row of trays 
is made to recline backs upwards. The first of the 
series is then turned over by hand and the leaf 
spread, the same with the rest of the trays in suc- 
cession. The row of trays being thus spread, a few 
turns of the windlass raises them all up at once to 
any desired elevation, It is then found that the 
leaf rests securely on the trays when raised to 
an angle of 45 deg. or even more. To about this 
elevation the trays are raised and left until 
the leaf is withered. Obviously trays standing in this 
position, with clearspaces of about four inches between 
each tray, admit of a free up-draught of wind to carry 
away moisture from both sides of the leaf. The air 
pipes are so arranged as to disperse a constant gentle 
current of fresh dry air under each row oftrmjs uniformly, 
thus each tray gets its own supply of fresh drying 
wind, such wind having only to pass once between the 
trays, after which it is driven out through the upner 
ventilators by the constant incoming wind from below. 
Thus in bad, wet weather it is only necessary, accord- 
ing to the inventor, to close all doors and windows, 
and set heater and fan to work, and first-rate withering 
can be done irrespective of the weather outside. Many 
planters of large experience, the inventor mentions 
have told him that this system of withering is well 
calculated to save a large portion of the losses now 
unavoidable during heavy flushes of leaf in the rainy 
seasons. Should this expectation be realised it is 
scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance of 
such an improvement. 
As to the great saving of labour, that, the inventor 
contends, is obvious on the face of it, for the spread- 
ing of the leaf upon a flat open surface some 2 ft. from 
the floor is much easier than the stooping down, and 
climbing up, and reaching between the tats necessitated 
by the present mode of working, whilst for gathering: 
in the withered leaf a few turns at the winding gear 
raises a row of some fifty or sixty trays to an up- 
right position, and the leaf at once shakes down upon 
the sheet spread out under the series of trays. The 
sheet is then wound in upon a simple roller having 
a handle and light gear-wheels. The leaf can be 
dropped through an opening in the floor or picked 
up as desired. There is nothing in the process that 
cm break or bruise the leaf, which is another very 
important consideration, having regird to all the 
vexed questions about small siftings. 
At first sight it does not strike us that there would 
be the saving of factory space which is claimed for 
this system. It is, however, a matter of simple com- 
putation, but the inventor contends that upon a 
careful comparison of the spreading space obtained 
by the new arrangement with the actual spreading 
space available in numbers of factories of the ordi- 
nary kind more than twice the area of spreading space 
is obtained under the new method in the same area 
of building. 
It is further claimed that in the wear and tear 
of plant a saving of fully 60 per cent will 
be realised. The wire trays are never moved 
from their places, and the only handling re- 
quired is just to swing them over for spreading the 
leaf. Strong trays so used are calculated to last for 
some years. 
The inventor claims that the moat important re- 
sults are expected to arise from the control the 
system gives over the necessary conditions of wither- 
ing in bad weatlier. When the weather is good and 
quite favourable for natural withering the windows 
of the house are opened and no heater or fan used. 
The arrangement of the trays he regards quite as 
suitable for natural atmospheric withering as the 
ordinary tats now in use, plus the saving of labour, 
space, &c. If the weather is hot, dead, and still, 
the fan alone can he worked, imparting a nice gentle 
motion and life to the air and expelling the yapom« 
