DBPEECIATION OF PRODUCE. 
cumbered with tails that, in order to get rid of 
them, they were periodically passed into the 
nearest stream, or they were heaped up out- 
iside to ferment, and, when rotten, in the spare 
time after crop, were put back into the cistern, 
tramped out, and despatched as inferior coffee, a 
htting name, often so discoloured and rotten as to 
be harHly worth the cart-hire, and yet the coffee 
amongst these skins being, of course, the largest size, 
as it did not or could not pass through the sieve, 
was the most valuable in quality had it not been spoilt 
in this system of fermenting. 
In some of the far inlying jungle ♦ states,, 
what an enormous item of expense was thatch 
for buildings. I have known a bundle of mana 
grass for thatch, which was as much as a cooly 
could carry, cost 3Jd. or 7d. each. Then every build- 
ing required some annual repairs in thatch. A large 
store or bungalow would probably require some 
thousands of bundles, and after it was put on during 
the dry season, a tearing wind from the north-east, 
before the thatch had settled down, would lay bare 
the big rafters or ridge-poles. 
In windy situations a framework of jungle sticks 
was sometimes put up lengthways and across along 
the roof to keep the thatch in position. This was all 
very well when the weather was dry, but during 
the rainy season these sticks intercepted the run of 
water and rotted the thatch, so that what was gained 
in one way was lost in another. Then, if a full 
thatching was considered unecessary, a new layer 
would be put on the top of the old : this latter, be- 
ing quite rotten, decomposed into a sort of earth, 
received and retained all the moisture, and added 
greatly to the weight of the roof, so that not un- 
frequently the rafters cracked and gave way under 
tile accumulated weight. I have no doubt on some 
of these estates the cost of thatch alone might have 
roofed the store over and over again with tiles. Who 
was the first inti’oducer of shingles They were 
unknown in these times. What a mess our bunp- 
tow used to be in during the periodical thatching 
time ! 
This occupied days, sometimes weeks, and during 
the process of thatching, if there came on a shower of 
* We recollect sending to the from Badulla, 
in December 1840, information on the management of 
a coffee estate, obtained from Sir William Reid, as the 
result of his experience in Demerara, In this paper the 
mode of making, and using, shingles was fully described„ 
But we should think the^ must have been already 
in use. — Ej), 
