February i, 1892.] 
rHr TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 
555 
estimates given by praotical men of experience on 
the spot, Arabian coffee can be bronght into bearing 
for abont $200 per acre ; but to make the matter 
absolutely certain, so far as such matters can be 
certain, make it £80 sterling. With ordinary luck 
the third year’s crop should pay all its expenses, 
and from the fourth year with an annual crop of $6 
per acre, at current rates for such coffee as would 
be produced at 2 000 to 3,000 feet elevation and 
oosling £1S per annum for production, say 50a per 
owt., there would remain a clear profit of £15 per 
acre, or nearly 50 per cent on the capital outlay. 
With crops on young coffee, 6 to 10 years of age of 8 
to 10 owt. an acre, the results would be immense, 
and there is no reason apparent at this time why 
coffee in Perak should not produce such crops as 
coffoe in Ceylon, India and Java has already done. 
In four years Arabian coffee may be expected to 
cover the ground and to be in full bearing, pro- 
ducing a bean, which properly cured and shipped 
would fetch the extreme rates ruling in the markets 
of the world. Liberian coffee, on the other hand, 
takes seven to eight years to come into full bearing 
and to cover the ground, a large proportion of which 
in the meantime has to be kept clean and gives 
no return to the planter. The position of the 
ostates in the hot steamy lowoouniry naturally 
causes the weeds to grow up muoh faster than 
on the bills, and oonscgucotly the estate is more 
expensive to weed, and a larger extent of land has 
to bo gone over for a lengthened period than in 
the cnltivatiou of tho other variety. Again the 
carriage of the cherry coffee on the heads of the 
coolies for considerable distances is always a matter 
giving trouble on coffee estates, and whereas 2J 
bushels of Arabian cherry give one bushel of 
parchment, it requires no less than five bushels of 
Liberian cherry to turn nut one of parchment, 
thus just doubling the weight that has to be carried 
about the estate — and doubling the trouble and 
eipente of its transport. After all, when the coffee 
is put on the homo markets, Liberian fetches some 
15 to 20 shillings per owt. less than the Arabian. 
The diUerenoe has of late not been so marked 
simply bcoBUBO there has been little or none of 
the East Indian coffee to compete with Liberian, 
the value of tho latter of course being altogether 
abnormal. Liberian has seldom or never touched 
^ound 100 shillings per owt. whilst high grown 
Arabica has gone as high as 160s, and good or- 
dinary has ruled llOs to 120s for months at a time. 
A getting ent of the fact that tho 
Arabian variety is the more valuable and more 
easily manipulated of the two varieties, and in 
Perak the numerous roads already made and the 
Jailwaye, completed and in course of oonslruotion, 
facilitatn tho opening up of the jungio. Tho labour 
supply just now is comparatively large, in oonse- 
TUeuce of the scarcity of food in India and the 
depression in the tobacco industry in Sumatra. 
HETUIINS I'TIOM KICK CULTUllK 
IN CEYIAIN. 
As Sir Arthur Havelock, in his speech at tho 
Agricultural College Prize.giving, expressed so 
pessimistic a view of the returns from paddy 
culture in this island, we would draw His Ex- 
oellenoy’s particular attention to the astounding 
statement made by a very competent lUthority 
elsewhere. So badly is paddy preserved 
tor so unripe is muoh of it when harvested) and 
BO little attention is paid to tho seleotion of 
Bced generally, that out of one, two or three 
bushels sown, according to quality of soil, only 
one-fourth of a bushel, as n maximum, over germi- 
nates and results in grain-boaring plants I When 
to seed so inferior as is thus indicated, careless and 
unscientific cultivation ia added, we need not wonder at 
poor returns obtained, but we may well protest against 
impeachment on this account of our natural conditions 
of soil, irrigation water and climate. In all the rice 
culture we saw in Java the seeds wore germinated 
in nurseries and planted out into tho fields in re- 
gular rows. Here suob a system is exceptional, while 
what is called ploughing is really the more stirring 
of a few inches of water-saturated mud. The 
advantages of superior ploughs would be that the 
land could be ploughed and pulverised when dry 
sabsoil being stirred without being brought to tho 
surface. This and careful selection of seed would 
prevent waste of grain, now so enormous, while 
waste of water would also be prevented, much to 
the improvement of the grain produced. The im- 
pression left on onr mind by this latest contribu- 
tion to the literature of paddy culture is, that 
where poor returns are the rule, it is not, in most 
oases soil and climate which are at fault, but 
perfunctory husbandry. 
WASTE IN the use OP BUILUINO 
JIATEHIAL. 
Our attention has been directed to the un- 
scientific way in which out native builders often 
dispoBo their material in the works of o^nstruoiion 
undertaken by them. Amongst the people of this 
colony the study of architecture, not alone as an 
art but as a practical matter, is, as yet, altogether 
unknown. It may bo said, indeed, that as regards 
the first of theso two aspeots we have no architecture 
at all. The taste shown in tho design of the 
ancient monuments left to us as the work of a 
bygone age no longer survives, and an art which 
must at one time have nourished in this island 
in a high degree no longer exists among us. 
But it is to tho second aspect, that which most 
concerns us economically, that we would more 
specially direct attention. It cannot be said that 
in those ancient works to which ws have referred 
there is evidence of such a disposition of material 
as would jastify us in the assumption that the 
strength of its many varied forma had been tho 
subject of intelligent consideration. The skill in 
architectural construction which distinguished tbo 
Arab builders, and which enabled them to so 
erect those light and graceful domes and 
tho towering obelisks which form so essential 
a feature of Indian architecture, was apparently 
unknown to our own earlier deeigners. All their 
work, like that of the ancient Egyptians, was of so 
massive a chaincter that they never oared it 
would set m, to olcsely adapt their disposition of 
material to the exact requirements they had to 
provide for. Like tho Egyptians, it may be said that 
most of their ODnstructive work was monolithic. 
They wedged _ out huge masst-s of stono, and 
applied them indiscriminately to support both great 
and triflinv weights. Much of this tendency re- 
mains to the present day, and we think that in 
our schools for technical education no branch of 
constructive art could better be atuilied than the 
adaptation of moans to their ends, the study, in 
a word, both of the strength of materials and of 
the strains to which they beceme subject under 
tho many different conditions of their application. 
It is from tho want of this knowledge, we feel 
sure, that so much of the waste of building 
material that ia observable in all modern works 
of native construction is duo. Noroan wo exempt 
altogether our own I’ublio Works Department 
from sharing in some degree in the same eharge. 
Many of tho officers of that department, until re'- 
