THE COFFEE-LEAF DISEASE OF CEYLON. 
127 
disease seem to be very analogous to what are 
observed in vaccinic or other such contaminations.” 
Anything falling from Dr. Thwaites on such a subject 
naturally carries great weight. As has been already re- 
marked, it is possible that the remedial methods suggested 
by Mr. Morris may prove practically useless. But it may 
be claimed for them that they are based on intelligible facts, 
and if they fail the practical proceeding is to try and ascertain 
why, and improve the curative treatment accordingly. But 
Dr. Thwaites’s criticisms are based, not so much on facts, but 
on theoretical conceptions. How, it may be asked, can 
‘‘ infecting matter ” be absorbed by the roots of a plant to 
subsequently give origin to a definite organism in its tissues ? 
How can this organism exist in those tissues in diffused 
form ?” And what is the precise meaning to be gathered from 
these expressions and from the supposed analogy of the 
Heinileia to “ vaccinic contamination ?” These quotations are 
taken from Government documents officially published for 
the purpose of communicating to the planting community 
the voice of science on a subject of the gravest importance 
to them. Dr. Thwmites certainly owes it to himself to 
express, in a more precise way, and to support by scientific 
evidence, the views which he has at present only somewhat 
vaguely indicated, but which seem to lean towards an ex- 
planation of the disease as a persistent constitutional in- 
fection. 
The leaf disease seems to have speedily shown itself in 
Southern India after its first appearance in Ceylon. In 
1876 it appeared in Sumatra, in 1879 in Java and Bencoolen, 
and this year news has reached this country of its appearance 
in Fiji, where, however, it was first noticed in May of last 
year. The outbreak in the latter colony is a misfortune 
much to be regretted, as coffee promised to be one of its most 
successful enterprises. Very full details have been sent by its 
Government to the Colonial Office, and the whole narrative 
of the outbreak affords a most striking analogy to the introduc- 
tion of an epidemic, such as that of measles, into Fiji itself.^ 
The disease was in all probability introduced directly from 
Ceylon to Fiji with a box of seeds packed in earth early in 
1879. A few months later it made its appearance in the 
Great Amalgam Plantation, and subsequently spread to other 
plantations on the Ilewa river, in the apparently capricious 
manner which Dr. Thwaites found so difficult of compre- 
hension in Ceylon. Fortunately, in Fiji the Government 
placed the matter in the hands of Dr. W. McGregor, the 
^ Moseley ‘ Notes by a Naturalist,’ p. 341, 
