CHAPTER X.

[48]"Manual of Coorg," compiled by Rev. G. Richter, Principal, Government Central College, Mercara. Mangalore, 1870.

[49]The late Mr. William Pringle, who, after leaving Coorg, wrote in 1891, for the "Madras Mail," some interesting and suggestive papers on the cultivation of coffee.

[50]I make this statement on the authority of Mr. Meynell (videpreface), and it is, no doubt, the result of his experience in the Bamboo district, but his estimate could hardly, I should say, apply to the estates I visited in North Coorg.

After a long and attentive observation of the various occupations of life, I have no hesitation in saying that, for one who has to earn his bread somewhere, the life of a planter in Mysore, if not the very pleasantest and most interesting (and as far as my own experience goes it is both) in the world, is assuredly one of the most agreeable occupations that anyone of intelligence, industry, and active habits, and fond of sport and an independent and open-air life, could betake himself to. It will be observed that I place intelligence in the van, and I do so because, though there is some truth in the native proverb which declares that, "with plenty of manure even an idiot may be a successful agriculturist," I know of no occupation that calls for a greater degree of intelligence and steady application than that of a planter in Mysore, or any district where shade trees are required. For where the planter has only to deal, as he has in Ceylon, with the coffee on his land and nothing else, the business, though even then of course requiring considerable skill and intelligence, is comparatively speaking a simple one. But in Mysore the necessity of providing shade for the coffee gives us at once an additional and highly complicated business in the planting and management of the shade trees, and their selection and distribution to suit the various soils, aspects and gradients we have to deal with. Then the fact of having shade trees, which of course take up much of the manure intended for thecoffee, makes the application of the manure, and especially the quantity to be put down at a time, a matter of constant doubt, for on the one hand, how much do the shade trees not rob us of, and on the other hand, how much do they not return to the land by their fallen leaves? Then should we not manure and cultivate in a different manner and degree the coffee under the direct shade of the trees, and the coffee in the open spaces between them? Such are some of the numerous points connected with coffee planting under shade, to which I briefly allude at the outset in order to show those who wish to plant coffee that a high degree of intelligence, and power of observation, are required to make a successful planter. Then it must be considered further that a colloquial knowledge of the Kanarese language must be acquired—a language which, from its admixture of ancient and modern Kanarese, the variation in the accent, and the words in common use in various parts of the country, is generally considered to be the most difficult in India. And, as will be seen further on, it requires no small amount of study and observation in order to determine how best to lay out money in the purchase or manufacture of manures. There is also occasion for much tact, firmness, and temper, in dealing with the labourers and overseers on the estates, and also the native population with which nearly all the estates in Mysore are surrounded. Then much tact and judgment is required in dealing with the Government officials. Other points might also be added, but I have probably said enough to caution those who may be inclined to embark in coffee planting in Mysore, against assuming, as has hitherto been too often done, that it is a business which may be managed by people of inferior capacity.

I have said that the occupation is an agreeable one, and may add that, though the life of a planter involvesmuch attention to his business, there is no really hard work in the sense that there is hard work in the colonies, and, from the coffee being in shade, there is no exposure to the sun, while as all the preparation of the crop is done by agents on the coast, there is none of that indoor factory work which tea planters have to undertake. Then the climate, taking it all the year round, is distinctly an agreeable one,—an exquisitely fine one in the winter, never disagreeably warm in the hot weather, owing to the coffee districts being under the influence of breezes from the western sea, only disagreeably wet in the monsoon, though then the climate is so fresh and healthy, that many find that season of the year to be by no means unpleasant. Besides, during the worst part of the wet season, there is comparatively little to do, and the owner of an estate can then leave home for change of air and scene. As regards the healthiness of Mysore, I can only say that everything depends on the discretion of the individual. If he chooses to take reasonable care of himself, experience shows that the climate is a decidedly healthy one, but if he chooses to expose himself unnecessarily, and fails to take those precautions as regards food, and against chills which all sensible people do, then he will be pretty sure to get fever. I may mention that the elevations of the coffee estates vary from 2,800 to about 4,000 feet above the level of the sea, which partly accounts for the temperate nature of the climate, though this of course is, as I have previously pointed out, very largely controlled and improved by the estates being under the influence of the charming sea-breezes of the Western Ghauts. And if the planter wishes to avoid the hot weather altogether, he has only to go to Ootacamund, 7,000 feet above sea-level, where he will not only come in for a delightful climate, but for the Ootacamund season. April and May may be pleasantly spent there, and whenthe monsoon begins in June, the planter who desires to avoid it can go to Bangalore, where he will be in time for the season there, and he can afterwards return to his estate in September. This is a change I can recommend from practical experience. Or should a change to England be preferred, the planter should leave India about the end of April, and return in October. Such changes as these of course are only to be thought of when the planter has made his way in the world; and I only allude to them here to show that he may personally see to the carrying out of all the important operations from October till April, and either spend the remainder of his time under most agreeable circumstances in India, or pass the summer and autumn in England. In former days such changes could not reasonably have been contemplated, owing partly to the time taken up in travelling, and partly to the cost, but we now have railways within thirty to sixty miles of the various plantations, and it is certain that at no very distant date these distances will be halved, and that we shall then be within seventeen to eighteen days of London—at present we may be said to be within eighteen to nineteen days of it. In expense the cost has been halved; a first-class return ticket from Bombay to London may now be had for £90, and on other lines of steamers the rates are lower. But it is now time to turn from matters of detail to consider the advantages of coffee in Mysore, as a good, safe, and permanent investment, and in order to show that the two last mentioned statements are well founded, I have obtained some details which will show the probable profits of coffee in Mysore. For obvious reasons I withhold the names of the estates. I have said that the investment is a permanent one, and by this I mean that, unless ruined by profound and incredible stupidity, a well shaded coffee estate in Mysore will last as long as the world will, or at any rate as longas the inhabitants of it choose to drink coffee, and in confirmation of this opinion, I may mention that one of the most flourishing pieces of coffee I have ever seen in Mysore was planted on land first opened about ninety-five years ago, and which was replanted about seventy years after it was first opened. I can also point to land opened in 1857, and which has in recent years been replanted with the new variety of coffee imported from Coorg, and, as the owner of it said to me last year when we were going round the property, "The estate is now looking better than you have ever seen it." But all the old estates in Mysore that were planted in the proper coffee zone are in existence now, and many of them look better than they ever did. The durability of coffee property in Mysore, then, is, as we have seen, not a subject of speculation, but an ascertained fact, and I now proceed to show that it is as profitable as it is durable.

The first case I have to give relates to coffee property purchased by a friend of mine with money borrowed at eight per cent. interest, and with his permission I publish an account of his investment, as it not only shows what has been done in Mysore in the face of great difficulties, but illustrates the profits that may be expected from a property that is well managed, and well situated as regards soil and climate. In 1876, then, he purchased a native estate of 240 acres of good coffee land, of which 180 acres had been very irregularly planted with "chick" coffee (the original Mysore plant). The total cost amounted to 98,000 rupees, which sum was borrowed at eight per cent. By 1880 the loan was reduced, from the profits of the coffee, by about 30,000 rupees, and my friend then purchased an adjoining native estate of 163 acres, sixty of which were also very irregularly planted with chick coffee. The price was 13,250 rupees, which he also borrowed at eight per cent. The total amount borrowed was thus 111,250 rupees,and the total coffee land was 403 acres. Up to about this time the chick coffee had done fairly well, and by 1880 the loan, as we have seen, was reduced by 30,000 rupees, but soon afterwards this variety of coffee plant began rapidly to deteriorate all over the district, and estates like my friend's, which had hitherto given satisfactory profits, did but little more than pay their working expenses. But, luckily for himself, my friend, directly after the purchase of each estate, began to plant them with the Coorg kind of coffee (afterwards fully alluded to in this chapter) which had been recently introduced, and, as the old chick trees were from six to seven feet high, and had no lower branches, they did not for some time interfere with the progress of the Coorg plants, and yielded enough to pay expenses. As the Coorg plants came into bearing the old chick plants were removed, and in 1887-88 nearly ninety tons of coffee were picked, and by that year the whole debt, principal and interest, was paid off, and a considerable balance was left over to my friend's credit. In 1889-90 the property gave him a clear profit of £3,350, and it has done well ever since. Thus with all these tremendous difficulties to contend with, and in the face of the loss of all the old coffee, and after having to replant the whole property at great expense, my friend found himself in the possession of an estate, free of all debt, capable of yielding good annual profits. And it must be remembered, further, that this result was obtained, not from virgin forest land exclusively, but from land the greater part of which consisted of old native plantations.

There are, I need hardly say, no means of ascertaining the profits that may be expected from coffee in Mysore, but the following analysis of a Manjarabad estate of 400 acres under cultivation, which has been supplied to me by a friend, will form a fair guide to what may be reasonably expected from a Mysore estate where the management is good. In the case in question, the average crop for thelast five years, has been 3¾ cwt. an acre. The expenses were 111½ rupees an acre, and the average profit 111-1/10 rupees per acre per annum, or rather over £7 2s. 6d. an acre. I may add that I consider this a fair average estimate of what may be expected in Mysore on a well managed estate, as a considerable proportion of the land in question is of decidedly inferior quality. I have no special details to give from the northern part of Mysore, but I am informed by a planter of experience, who resides in that part of the country that, from a good estate of 200 acres, a profit of from £1,500 to £2,000 a year may be counted on.

We have seen that the life is attractive, that coffee property is durable and profitable, and the reputation of the coffee is not exceeded by any coffee in the world, and, as I shall show further on, the plant is singularly free, when properly shaded and worked, from risk in any form, or pests of any kind. Nothing, in short, in the world would appear to be more desirable as a source of investment than coffee in Mysore, for those who are prepared to understand and look after it. And with all these alluring advantages, which I have, I believe, most accurately described, it might naturally be supposed that, coffee property in Mysore could be readily disposed of on advantageous terms to the seller. As a matter of fact, it is quite unsalable at any price that would be at all satisfactory to the owners. The explanation of this is very simple. Those who are working their own estates on the spot seldom command enough capital to invest in new estates, or do not care to extend their property, while capitalists at a distance, have, from the absence of information, no means of judging as to whether coffee in Mysore is a good investment or not. Instead, then, of accurate, or fairly accurate, accounts to rely on, we have nothing but vague and misleading statements and reports, which often affect most injuriously industries of sound andthriving character, and, as an instance in point, I may mention that, from what I had heard of coffee in Coorg (to which I have devoted a chapter), I should have been fully prepared, had I not learnt to regard all such reports with suspicion, to find a district on the high road to ruin. As it was, I was certainly prepared, and, indeed, expected to find, coffee in Coorg in a doubtful position. That precisely the reverse proved to be the case was a most agreeable surprise to me. One of my informants dismissed the whole matter thus. Coffee in Ceylon, he said, has gone with leaf disease, Wynaad (the district in the Madras Presidency, south of Coorg) is following, Coorg will go next, and Mysore last. Ceylon certainly has gone, Wynaad I will not pronounce upon, as I have not visited the estates in that district, but that Coorg and Mysore with their shade grown coffee will go with leaf disease is a mere groundless assertion, as the reader will, I hope, admit when I come to treat, in its proper place, of leaf disease and the effect of shade in limiting its amount, and controlling its injurious effects. And so far had these reports gone, and so thoroughly do the public at home connect coffee with Ceylon, and Ceylon alone, that a most thriving Mysore planter told me that, when he visited England, he now took good care to conceal his occupation, as he found that when he mentioned he was a coffee planter, people concluded at once that he was ruined. It is, then, most necessary to lay all the facts connected with coffee in Mysore before the public, with the view of placing our industry in its legitimate position, and I therefore make no apology for having gone into this branch of my subject with considerable minuteness. But it is now time to address myself particularly to the history and cultivation of coffee in Mysore, and to other matters in which the planters are directly or indirectly interested, and first of all it may not be uninteresting if Isay a few words as to the introduction of the plant into India, or at any rate as to the earliest notices I can find on the subject.

The earliest notice I can find of coffee in India is contained in a Dutch work entitled "Letters from Malabar," by Jacob Canter Visscher, chaplain at Cochin. This collection of letters has been translated by Major Drury, or rather at his instance, and as the date of the Dutch editor's preface is 1743, it is evident that the coffee plant must have at least been introduced five or six years earlier, but the date of its introduction is not mentioned, and we are merely informed, at page 160, that "the coffee shrub is planted in gardens for pleasure and yields plenty of fruit, which attains a proper degree of ripeness. But it has not the refined taste of the Mocha coffee.... An entire new plantation has been laid out in Ceylon." The plant, however, though introduced at that early period, does not seem to have met with much attention in India, and I can find no other allusion to coffee in Indian books till we come to Heyne's Tracts, which were published in 1800, and we are there merely told that coffee was sold in the bazaars of Bangalore and Seringapatam.

Turning next to the history of coffee in Mysore, we find that there is no official record of either plant or planting further back than the year 1822, which is not very surprising, as it was only placed under British rule in 1831; but tradition in these cases seldom fails to supply some story which is suitable enough, and it may after all be quite true that, as reported, a Mussulman pilgrim, about two hundred years ago, returned from Arabia with seven beans which he planted round his mutt (temple) on the Bababudan hills in the northern part of Mysore, near which some very old trees may still be seen, and that from these beans all the coffee in Mysore has descended. But, though the plant may have been introduced at this earlyperiod, I think it improbable that anything in the shape of plantations existed before about the close of the last century. And, though the plant has been known for such a number of years, it is not a little remarkable that coffee has only come into use by the natives who grow it in recent years, and when I first settled in Mysore, in 1856, I was repeatedly asked by the farmers of the country whether we ate the berry, and of what use it could possibly be. And even now, from all that I can learn, coffee is rarely used by the natives in the coffee growing districts, though I am informed that it is so to a considerable extent in the towns of the province.

I have alluded to the tradition of coffee being first introduced into Mysore by a Mussulman pilgrim about two hundred years ago, and the species of coffee that was introduced then, or at some subsequent period, was the only one known in Mysore when I entered the province in 1855. This plant was finally called the "Chick" variety of coffee, and the name was taken, I believe, from the town of Chickmaglur, which lies close to the original Mysore home of the coffee plant. This variety had thriven well and promised to do so for an indefinite period of time, but towards the end of 1866, and during the three succeeding years, we had dry hot seasons, which caused a general attack of the Borer insect, and at about the same time there occurred a general decline in the constitution of the trees, which, though no doubt greatly hastened in the majority of instances by the Borer, of which the reader will find a particular account in a subsequent chapter, has never been explained, and so serious was this decline that, had we been dependent wholly on the original Mysore variety, it is the opinion of one of our most experienced planters that, to use his own words, "there would have been an end of coffee planting in Mysore except in the case of a few elevated tracts on the Bababudan range of hills." But,most fortunately for the planters, the Government, and the people of Mysore, Mr. Stanley Jupp—a South Mysore planter—took in 1870 a trip into Coorg, which lies on the south-west of Mysore, and was so favourably impressed with the variety of coffee grown there that he recommended that experiments should be made with it in Mysore, and in 1871 experiments on a considerable scale were made with carefully selected seed which was obtained from Coorg by Messrs. R. A. and Graham Anderson, Mr. Brooke Mockett, and Mr. Arthur Jupp. The experiments turned out to be a remarkable success, the young plants raised from the imported seed grew with extraordinary vigour, and it was soon found that the new variety would grow and crop well, and even on land on which all attempts to reproduce the "Chick" variety had utterly failed. Then this sinking industry rose almost as suddenly as it had fallen; old and abandoned estates, and every available acre of forest, and even scrub, were planted up, and land which used to change hands at from 5 to 10 rupees an acre was eagerly bought in at twelve times these amounts. But there was still some anxiety felt as regards the new variety, or rather the produce of it, for when we took it to market the brokers at once objected and said, "We are not going to give you Mysore prices for Coorg coffee." But it was found, as had been anticipated by many experienced planters, that as the trees from Coorg seed aged the produce each year assimilated more and more in appearance and quality to that of the old Mysore plant, which is still grown on some estates in North Mysore, and some years ago I even obtained a slightly higher price for my coffee from the new variety than a friend had obtained for coffee of the old "Chick" kind. The coffee industry of Mysore is now established on a thoroughly sound basis. We have a plant which crops more regularly and heavily than the old variety, andwhich is in every respect satisfactory, and the produce of it has so improved under the influence of the soil and climate of Mysore, that, with the exception of the estates which produce the long-established brand of "Cannon's Mysore," and perhaps a few other estates on the Bababudans which have retained the original "Chick" variety of coffee, there is little difference in value between the produce of Coorg plants which have been long established in Mysore and the coffee of the original and now generally discarded variety. I may here add that the coffee of Mysore has always had a high reputation. This high quality has been partly attributed to soil and climate and partly to the coffee being slowly ripened under shade. But, however that may be, a glance at the weekly lists in the "Economist" will show that Mysore coffee of the best quality is commonly valued at from 10s. to 15s. a cwt. above that of any other kind that reaches the London market.

I now propose to give a brief account of our coffee land tenures, and shall then address myself to the intricate question of coffee cultivation in Mysore, and the still more difficult question of the shade trees which shelter the coffee from sun and wind, and the soil from the wash of the tropical rains.

When I entered the province in 1855 anyone who desired to have a given tract of forest land for coffee planting sent an application to the Government for it. An inquiry was then made, and, if no objection existed to the land being made over to the intending settler, or applicant, a puttah or grant, free of any charge for the land or any fee even in connection with the grant, was made out in Kanarese, which mentioned the name of the land and the boundaries of it, and stated that the land was to be planted with coffee within three years' time, and that, if not so planted, it was liable to be resumed by the State. Nosurvey was made of the land, nor was it of any importance to estimate the acreage, there being no land tax, but in its place a tax of 1 rupee per cwt. of clean coffee produced, which was only liable to be demanded when the coffee was exported from the country, and not before. This system may seem to many to have been an objectionable one, and, from one point of view, no doubt it was, because the more highly the planter cultivated, the more highly he paid on each acre of his holding, but, on the other hand, the system enabled the planter to start with a very small capital, as he paid nothing for his land, nor a single shilling to the State till he had produced his crop. For starting and stimulating the industry the system certainly had its merits; but after the industry had obtained a firm footing, it was evidently of advantage to institute a taxational system of a different character, and, after much discussion and correspondence on the subject, the existing forms of tenure were finally decided on, and the "Mysore Coffee Land Rules" were formally notified to the public in March, 1885. There are two forms of grant—Form A, with an assessment of one rupee and a half an acre, which rate is fixed permanently, and Form B, at one rupee per acre, with liability to revision at the end of each period of thirty years. The assessment for local purposes stands now at 1 anna an acre (1½d.at 2s. exchange), and that is the only taxation we have. There is not, and never has been, an income-tax in Mysore, nor is it at all probable that there ever will be, as the finances are in a flourishing condition, and the revenues under several important heads are improving, as may be seen on referring to the chapter on the general history of the province.

Those who desire further and more detailed information regarding the rules in question, may be referred to the notification of March 24th, 1855, and I may mention that they are given in full in the "Mysore and CoorgDirectory."[51]

I regret that I have no precise information to give as regards the implanted coffee land in Mysore. With reference to the southern part of the province, I think I am quite safe in saying that all the land suitable for coffee has been taken up, but I am informed by a correspondent who resides in the northern part of the province, that in that part of the country there is much implanted land both in the possession of the Government and in the hands of private individuals. All along the sides of the western passes there are indeed large blocks of forest, but these, from the excessive rainfall, are quite unsuitable for coffee, as I am able to testify from an unfortunate practical experience, as I once took up land for coffee on the crests of the Ghauts. After its failure had been completely proved I sold the land to a planter who has since cultivated cardamoms on it, and last year the rainfall registered there was no less than 340 inches, nearly all of which fell between May and the end of October.

From what has hitherto been written as regards our taxation, I need hardly say that the planters are well satisfied with the terms granted to them by the Government. With the roads, post, telegraphs, railways, dispensaries, and other facilities at their command, and the prospect of a further important development of communications, they have also every reason to be satisfied. In short, the progressive character of the Government would seem to leave nothing to be desired. There is, however, always a "but" in life, and in our case there are two "buts." The first of these relates to the state of the law as regards advances given to labourers to be worked off by them,and to contractors to bring labourers; and the second to extradition. To these may be added three wants—I can hardly call them grievances—the want of a Wild Birds' Protection Act, a Game Act, and an agricultural chemist. On these five points I now propose briefly to remark.

The practice of giving money advances to labourers to be gradually worked off by them, and to contractors who undertake to supply labourers, has been productive of great loss and annoyance to employers, a great temptation to natives to commit fraud, and a source of constant worry to the officers of the Government. The Government sought by Act XIII. of 1859 to check these evils, not by preventive, but purely by punitive legislation. Since then there has been a constant demand by employers of labour for more punitive legislation in the shape of amendments to the Act of 1859, and from recent assurances made by the Viceroy when he visited Mysore in 1892, it seems probable that something further will be done on the same lines. And something may of course be done to insure that the defaulter shall be severely dealt with—when he is caught. When he is caught. Yes, therein lies the whole difficulty, one which seems to have been as completely ignored by the Government as it has been by the planters in the legislation adopted with a view to check the evils connected with advances. In order to prove the necessity for further legislation an old planter once printed an account of a case which he took up against a defaulting coolie. His description of the hunt, and the wiles of the defaulting labourer in moving from one part of the country to another, was positively amusing, and showed conclusively that it did not pay to attempt to catch a defaulting labourer. What, then, can be the use of an Act which after all only punishes the coolie when he is caught, if the trouble and expense involved in catching him be so great, as to make the game not worth thecandle? Is it not evident that the only thing which can help the planter is legislation which will make it very difficult for the labourer to obtain money from one employer and then run away and take an advance from another, and which will make it a comparatively easy matter to trace a defaulter? Now, after conferring with experienced planters and some leading native officials, I came to the conclusion that a system of registration could alone mitigate the serious evils of the advance system, and in conjunction with them I drew up a draft of a proposed Act which I laid on the table for the consideration of the Mysore Government when I attended the Representative Assembly in 1891, and I may mention that the draft in question has been printed in the Government Report of the Proceedings. It would be tedious to give an account of the provisions in the Bill, and it is sufficient to say that its two chief features were the registration of advances and the limitation of their amount. The registration was to be effected by its being made compulsory that when an advance was given three tickets on a Government form should be issued, one of which was to be held by the employer, the second by the labourer, and the third by the registrar of the talook. On each ticket was to be entered the name and address of the advancee, and the sum advanced, and as this was paid off the amounts so discharged were to be entered by the employer on the ticket retained by the labourer. When the whole amount was repaid, the ticket retained by the employer was to be handed to the registrar, who was then to erase the name of the labourer from the register of coolies under advances, and before any advance was handed to the labourer the registry was of course to be effected. The amount of advance was to be limited to ten rupees, and this was to be worked off in five months unless in the case of sickness. The object of limiting advances is as much in the interest of the labourer as of the employer, as it has been found that native employers of labour often give large advances to labourers and charge heavy interest on them when the coolie does not come to work, and thus so effectually get him into debt that he is reduced to the position of a slave. This system of registration would no doubt be troublesome, but it is the only way of checking the present evil system of giving advances which, now that labour is so well paid, is not really necessary, and that it is not so is evidenced by the fact that the large bodies of labourers employed in the gold mines receive no advances whatever. I may here mention that a private system of registration with reference to labour contractors has been started by the firm of Messrs. Matheson and Co., in connection with their extensive estates in Coorg, and that it has been found most useful. The system I have proposed would be valuable to the contractors, who themselves are often swindled by labourers to whom they have advanced money.

I now turn to the subject of extradition, the law relating to which has much aggravated the evils connected with giving advances to labourers. The want of legislation on this subject has been brought to the notice of the Viceroy, and it is to be hoped that there may soon be complete reciprocity between native States and the British Government as regards warrants. At present a defaulter flying from Mysore to British territory can only be arrested by calling in the interposition of the Resident, a process so cumbrous that it is practically true, as alleged in the petition of the planters of Southern India, that "Planters or contractors residing in Mysore cannot obtain warrants against defaulters in British territory, though planters in British territory can obtain warrants against defaulters in Mysore." This is a grievance which requires redress, not only for the sake of the planters, but also of all other employers of labourers, or those who may havemade contracts of any kind.

Cattle trespass, I may mention, is not here alluded to because, though it was at one time a great grievance, a Cattle Trespass Amendment Act received the assent of His Highness the Maharajah in December, 1892. By this, where it is proved to the satisfaction of Government that in any given local area cattle are habitually allowed to trespass on land and damage crops, the fines will be doubled, and the owner of the land has besides the right to bring an action for compensation for any damage done to his land or crops.

Having alluded to our grievances, I now pass on to consider lastly what may be called our wants as regards wild birds' protection, game preservation, and a Government agricultural chemist.

A Wild Birds' Protection Act exists in British India, but as its provisions have not as yet been extended to our province, I would suggest that Mysore, in consequence of its numerous plantations where coffee and other plants and trees are liable to be attacked by insects, probably requires such an Act even more than any other part of India, and I may at the same time take the opportunity of suggesting that all the native States should be communicated with so that an Act for the Protection of Wild Birds may be provided for every part of India. It would be superfluous to adduce here the numerous and evident advantages that would arise from the protection of wild birds, as their value is now so universally recognized, and I therefore pass on to offer a few brief remarks on game preservation, or, to speak more exactly, of the preservation of those wild birds and harmless animals which are useful as food.

The neglect of game preservation in India has not only been a cause of great loss to the country owing to the reckless waste of the sources of valuable supplies of food, but hasseverely injured the farmers in jungly tracts in a way that seems hitherto to have escaped notice. I allude to the fact that, in consequence of the wanton destruction of game in the western forests, tigers are compelled to inflict much greater losses on the herds of the natives. This is a fact to which I can personally testify, and which has since the middle of 1892 become steadily more apparent; for, when game was more plentiful in the forests along the crests, and at the foot of the Ghauts, the tigers lived largely upon game and rarely attacked cattle; indeed, so much was this the case that, about thirty years ago, a native who had the most outlying farm on the crests of the Ghauts told me that though tigers were constantly about they had never attacked his cattle. And as I was at the time living near his house, and clearing land for planting, and never got a shot at a tiger when residing there, I am sure that his statement was correct. But since that time English guns have become common, and the destruction of game of all kinds and of any age has gone on apace, and the result is that the tigers, which used to confine themselves mainly to preying on wild animals in the forests, have been forced to fall upon the village cattle, and I have never known tigers to be more destructive than they are now. On a single day this year no less than seven cattle were killed by tigers at one village, and an old planter of more than thirty years' standing, a near neighbour of mine, alluding to the subject in a recent letter, said, "Yes, there have been more tigers about this year than I have ever known." But it is not only on account of the supply of food from game, and for the sake of the cattle of the natives that a Game Preservation Act is urgently required, it is also urgently needed in order to check the abominable cruelties committed by the native hunters. Writing to me with reference to this subject, Colonel J. P. Grant, the head of the Survey and Settlement Service, observes as follows:

"Gunning and especially netting, in the most reckless and improvident manner, are on the increase. Antelope are fast disappearing, and in the jungle tracts night shooting is clearing out spotted deer especially. As for cruelty nothing can exceed the indifference of net-workers to any pain they may cause their captures. Snipe are caught and their legs and wings broken, and in this condition they are kept alive and carried to market. The wounding, necessarily reckless during night shooting, is horribly cruel. Pea fowl, jungle fowl, or anything fairly big, have their eyes sewn up. I have often seen this. In the case of hares the tying is very cruel, the thong cutting down to the bone; and the same is the case with any deer they may catch alive."

The rapid destruction of game of all kinds has been as melancholy as it has been remarkable, and I confess I never could have believed how complete, especially as regards small game, the deadly work has been had I not had occasion in recent years to drive, by easy stages, and early in the morning, along the whole of the western frontier of Mysore, and also much of the adjacent district of Coorg. In the old days, when riding, we always went at a walk and took our guns with us for shots at pea fowl, jungle fowl, pigeons, and other small game. But now you can neither see nor hear anything to shoot. And yet one of the favourite accusations of the Indian Congress against the Indian Government is that in consequence of the Arms Act the natives are unable to obtain guns and ammunition in order to defend themselves and their crops from the attacks of wild animals, though the scarcity of large game, and, in many cases, its absolute extinction, is notorious to sportsmen all over India. But the Mysore Government, I am happy to say, has at last directed its attention to the subject, and I have every reason to believe that a Game Actwill soon be introduced in Mysore.

The last want I have to allude to is that of a Government agricultural chemist, who should be empowered at a rate of fees, fixed by the State, to analyze soils and manures for private individuals, and to consult with planters and others as to the requirements of their soils and the best way of supplying them with manure. Such an officer would be very useful in searching for coprolites and new manurial resources. My life-long experience in agriculture on a large scale both in Scotland and Mysore has shown me more and more the great value of an agricultural chemist for discovering new manurial resources, and perhaps more especially economizing those that already exist; and the great want of such an officer was brought to the notice of Government by me when I was a member of the Representative Assembly in 1891.

I may conclude this chapter by alluding to a discovery, or rather, I should say, a probable discovery, of the greatest importance, of a new hybrid coffee plant—a cross between the Liberian and the coffea Arabica. This has occurred on the property of a friend of mine, but, at his request, I do not publish his name, as he would be inundated with applications for seed. This magnificent hybrid, of which there are only two trees in existence as yet, has enormous bearing powers, and leaves which are apparently absolutely impervious to leaf disease, for I could not discover a trace of it though the hybrid is standing next to a coffee plant which is covered with it. It is of course uncertain as yet whether the new plant can be established as a distinct variety, nor do we know anything of the flavour of the coffee, as the quantity produced is yet so small that berries are reserved exclusively for seed; but should it be possible to establish the new variety (and I know of no reason why it should not be established), quite a new departure will take place in coffee production inIndia, and the value of coffee land will be enormous, as, from calculations made, the hybrid can produce at the rate of eight or nine tons an acre, while as many hundredweights an acre would be considered an unusually heavy crop in Mysore.

[51]"Hayes' Mysore and Coorg Directory," Bangalore. This valuable compilation, which contains no less than 573 pages, gives a most complete account of almost everything relating to Mysore and Coorg.

I now turn to the greatest of all the points connected with coffee—the question of shade. And I call it the greatest point, because if good shade of the best kind is grown it is absolutely impossible to destroy a plantation in Mysore, even with the worst conceivable management or neglect, and I say this after ample experience, as had it not been for the abundant and excellent shade on a badly-managed property of my own it would have been permanently ruined. But with plenty of good kinds of shade trees on the land you might even close the plantation gates, and abandon the land, and, as long as cattle were kept out, return ten years afterwards, saw down the coffee, grow suckers from the stumps, plant up the land with young plants where vacancies had occurred, and in four or five years the plantation would be as good as ever, and the land even better, for it would not have been exhausted by crop, and the fallen leaves from the shade trees would have enriched the soil. And if the old trees were not in a condition, from old age, to grow suckers that would develop into good trees, the whole land could be advantageously replanted. But, as the reader will remember, I have said that the trees must be the best kinds of shade trees, a subject that requires great study and observation to master. Before beginning, however, it may be well to point out those general principles which govern the whole subject, and which at once show us the best kinds of trees to select,and what is nearly of as great importance, how to manage them after they have been selected or planted, and I would lay particular stress on the latter point, which has, I may observe, been largely if not entirely misunderstood, simply because the great governing principle has been neglected.

The governing principle, then, as regards shade for coffee is, that you should have on the land the smallest number of boles, because the more you multiply boles the more ground you waste; and the greater the number of large trees there are, the greater, of course, will be the number of large roots in the land, and the greater demand will there be on the resources of the soil; the greater, too, will be the waste of manure put down by the planter for the benefit of his coffee; and last, but by no means least, the smaller will be the amount of leaf deposit. I have seen much shade so managed as to give the greatest amount of boles with the smallest amount, and spread of branches, whereas the object of the planter ought to be to furnish the smallest number of boles with the greatest proportionate amount and spread of branches and foliage. And this unfortunate error, the evil of which will become more and more apparent as time advances, would never have been committed, had the primary principle I have pointed out been grasped at the outset.

Let us then keep firmly in mind that, (1) we require trees that will, from their wide-spreading branches, enable us to do with the smallest number possible on the land, and that (2) if we trim up the lower branches of these trees when the trees are young because we do not like to see them too closely over the coffee, we shall entirely defeat the main object we have in view, because we shall certainly produce a tall tree with a small head, and consequently small spread of branches; and the clear apprehension of the principle first named guides us at once to the selection of the right kind of trees, and their proper treatment. I will now proceedto state the names of the trees that are, in my experience, the most desirable, and, secondly, those which are good for coffee, but which for various reasons are undesirable. After much and close study of this important subject, and a very long experience, I have come to the conclusion that the only trees which are at once easily propagated; free from the risks of attacks from cattle owing to their being grown from long cuttings; little liable to attacks from parasites, and which afford a proper degree of shade, and also admit the largest relative supply of light; which afford a large supply of leaf deposit; and which lastly, but by no means leastly, have very wide spreading branches, are only five in number. I give first the Kanarese and then the botanical name of each. There are, then, Cub Busree (Ficus tuberculata), the Gonee (Ficus Mysorensis), the Kurry Busree (Ficus infectoria), Eelee Busree (a variety of the last named), and Mitlee.[52]

There are two kinds, Heb Mitlee, and Harl Mitlee—the second is a bad tree. The mitlee grows one fourth quicker than cub busree, and a recent close attention to this tree shows me that it is a much more desirable tree than either others or myself once supposed, for not only is it a quicker grower than the remainder of the most desirable kinds but its foliage lets in much light. It is, therefore, a most desirable tree for northern aspects.

I next turn to a class of trees which are undoubtedly good for coffee, but which, for various reasons to be hereafter given, are less desirable than the five trees first given. The first of these less desirable trees is the Jack—Halsen-Mara (Artocarpus integrifolia), which was once a favourite tree, and there can be no doubt that coffee thrives well under it, but it is not a wide-spreading tree, the shade is too dense for every aspect, it is a slow grower, and it must be raised from young plants, which are very liable to be attacked by stray cattle. Then when old, and sometimes of medium age, it is very liable to be attacked by parasites; and it produces annually a heavy[53]crop of fruit which costs money and trouble to remove when immature, and which, if left to ripen, exhausts the soil. It is, too, liable to suffer much from wind, and, in situations which are at all windy, is not much to be relied on, as, when under the influence of wind, the foliage becomes poor and scanty, and the tree sometimes dies altogether. A study of the foliage will show, that in one important particular, the five first-named trees are superior to jack, for their leaves are attached to the twigs by long stalks, and much light is thus admitted through the spaces between the stalks, while the leaves of the jack are not only more numerous but are attached by short stalks, and the foliage thus throws a very dark shade. Then jack, as it is an evergreen, always affords a thick shade quite continuously, while the five first-named trees not only cast a chequered shade, but, at certain periods of the year, shed every leaf, leaving the tree quite bare for some time, which is an advantage to the coffee. And besides, I have some reason to suppose that the dense shade of the jack encourages rot (a disease remarked upon further on), as one of my managers reports that he has observed it under jack while it was not apparent on the coffee under other kinds of shade trees. But on hot westerly and southerly slopes, and especially where the soil is a bad retainer of moisture,and where the gradient is rather steep, jack may be used with advantage, as in such situations the heat is great and the light strong. I am therefore taking steps to remove jack by degrees from all but southerly and westerly exposures. I may add here that I have found that plants grown from seed procured from the dry plains of the interior of Mysore, grow more than twice as fast as plants raised from local seed. In concluding my remarks on jack, I would particularly advise planters to remove the jack fruit when immature, and put it into the manure heap, or bury it, as, if left on the ground, it attracts cattle and village pigs into the plantation. The fruit is large and full of a great number of seeds which must be an exhaustive crop on the land. On the Nilgiri hills I am told by the planters that there is a ready sale for jack fruit, but this is not the case in coffee districts generally.

The Attí (Ficus glomerata) was with me once a favourite tree, and is generally considered to be a good one, as it affords a cool and desirable shade. As a young tree it is admirable, but as it ages the foliage becomes poor and scanty, and the tree has a tendency to run too much to thick bole, and thick branches, which are poorly supplied with smaller branches and foliage. When about thirty years old, I have generally found this tree to be a poor shader, but it can be much improved by severe pruning, or rather lopping. When thinning out shade on this estate about twenty years ago, a twelve year old tree had every branch removed preparatory to cutting down, but by some accident the tree was left standing, and the stumps of the branches threw out fresh shoots, and the tree is now flourishing, and has a comparatively wide spread of branches and fair amount of foliage. It is evident, then, that pruning heavily will cause the tree to throw out new and vigorous shoots, but as this is a troublesome and expensive work, and as attí is certainly liable to the defectabove alluded to, and is, besides, not a wide-spreading tree, it is evidently not so desirable as any of the first five I have named. Attí can be grown from cuttings, but these must not be large ones,i.e., they should be thinner than those commonly used when planting cuttings of the various fig trees recommended at the beginning of the section on shade.

The Noga (so called from its being much used to make bullock yokes from) or Nogurigay (Cedrela Microcarpa) is a favourite tree to plant for shade, as it is a quick grower, and cattle do not eat it, and it has been extensively planted in Mysore and Coorg. The shade is fairly good, but the tree is not a wide spreader. Then it has one very great objection owing to its being so peculiarly liable, when about thirty years old, to be severely attacked, and often killed, by parasites, and as it is so liable to be attacked, and therefore supplies a large quantity of parasite seed, the tree is the means of spreading these parasites to other shade trees. I have found that if you even remove every branch that is attacked, and quite below each parasite, the parasite will spring out again, and even more vigorously than before. In short, I found it impossible to contend with the parasites, and am ordering the removal of all Nogurigays from my plantations. I may add here that when jack is lopped in order to remove parasites, they do not spring out again in the same way. My head duffadar informs me that the reason why Nogurigays are so liable to parasites is on account of the rough, deeply-fissured bark, which retains the parasite seeds dropped by birds, whereas smooth-barked trees, like the first five named, of course do not retain them, and hence you rarely see parasites on smooth-barked trees. Another objection to this tree is that, from its shedding its leaves in the monsoon, and not growing them again till we are liable to have hot bursts of sun, you may have a thoroughly saturated soil exposed to a hot sun, which of course has the effect of rapidly hardening the soil. Aneighbouring planter tells me that he finds the Noga tree liable to attacks from parasites at even ten years old, and that he therefore regards the tree as a temporary shade,i.e., as a shade to be removed after other more desirable trees are ready to take their place.

Since writing this chapter I have again paid particular attention to this tree, and have been struck with the fact that, for some unknown reason, some trees of this variety seem to be much more liable to attacks of parasites than others, while some escape altogether. But it is quite clear to me that, generally speaking, this tree is not to be relied on, and I have, therefore, no hesitation in advising planters who have relied on it as a permanent shade to at once put down trees of the desirable kind first given with the view of gradually removing the Nogurigays.

Mullee Geruguttee. A very thick, tall tree with large buttresses. Coffee thrives well under this tree, but it is not a wide spreader, and, when old, the foliage becomes poor. It is evident that a tree of great thickness which is not a wide spreader, takes up an immense deal of room in proportion to the shade that it yields, and this tree is therefore not so desirable as any of the first five species I have given as being the most desirable trees.

Howligay (Acrocarpus Flaxinifolia). This tree has been largely planted in Mysore for shade, but no one speaks well of it now. We have some on my estate upwards of thirty years old, and the foliage is poor and scanty. The trees, too, shoot up to a great height, and spread but little. By topping at a certain height, this defect may be remedied to some extent, but in order to get an efficient shade from this tree you would require to plant it thickly, and would thus have a large proportion of stems and roots in the land. This tree, though not injurious to coffee, is certainly very undesirable as compared with the first-named kinds I have given. Some years ago two of these treesdied on my property, and all the coffee died around them.

Hessan (Artocarpus Hirsuta). Though said to be injurious in poor and shallow soil, coffee thrives under it in good land, but it has a tendency everywhere to run to stem, and therefore affords poor shade. An occasional tree branches out, and affords fair, and in some cases, even good shade, but, as a rule, this is not a desirable tree. It spreads little and thus gives but a poor return for the space taken up by its stem and roots.

Nairul (Eugenia Jambolana). This is a good shade tree. Coffee thrives well under it, and wherever it exists, or may have sprung up accidentally in the plantation, it should be preserved, but it is not, I consider, a desirable tree to plant, as it is a slow grower and not a wide spreader.

Wartee. This is a tree we have always preserved, but it is a slow growing tree, not at all a wide spreader, and the leaf deposit from it is not of a valuable quality, and it is, therefore, not a desirable tree to plant.

Gwoddan (Dolichos fabaeformis). Coffee thrives well under this tree, but it has a great profusion of very hard fruits or seeds about the size of a small plum, and these, when falling from a high tree, injure the coffee berries, as may be readily supposed; the tree, too, is not a wide spreader. It is, therefore, not a desirable tree to plant.

I may mention here that I have recently obtained a supply of seed ofAlbizzia Moluccana, which is the tree most approved of for shading coffee in the Island of Java, and I am informed by the superintendent of the Agri-Horticultural Society's Gardens, Madras (from whom I obtained the seed), that one of their correspondents who tried it some years ago reports that, "It grows rapidly, and is of great utility in putting a field of coffee under a light shade such as coffee likes," and that, "in four years theAlbizzia Moluccana, planted thirty feet apart, will cover the coffee trees." The leaves close during the night, thusgiving the coffee plants the benefit of the moonlight and dew more freely. Each ounce of the seed contains roughly 1,200 seeds, which, with ordinary care, should give 1,000 plants, and which, when planted out thirty feet apart, should shade twenty acres.

I now proceed to consider the methods that are adopted for planting under shade in Mysore. The first is to clear down and burn the entire forest, and then plant shade trees along with the coffee. The second is to clear and burn the underwood, and a certain portion of the forest trees, leaving the remainder for shade, and the third is (a system which I have myself adopted in the case of land lying in ravines) to clear off and burn the entire underwood and trees of the lower part of the ravines, leaving the upper portions of them, and the remainder of the land to be cleared and planted, under the original forest trees, as in the second method mentioned.

There can be no doubt that the first-named method is the easiest. I am aware that it has been adopted by some very experienced planters, and it has been partially adopted by myself in the case of all my land in the lower part of ravines. I am well able to judge of the advantages and disadvantages of both systems, as I have them under observation and treatment side by side. On the whole, I think there can be no doubt that the balance of advantage lies much in favour of land that has not had the forest cleared wholly and burnt off. It is true that by a wholesale clearance you at once kill the vast mass of live forest tree roots in the land, but, on the other hand, you at the same time destroy a store of slowly-decaying vegetable matter, which is of vast importance, not only in feeding the coffee, but in maintaining the physical condition of the soil, and so making it more, easily, and therefore cheaply, workable, and a better agent for preserving the health of the tree. And as a proof of the actual loss incurred, I mayobserve that Colonel C. I. Taylor, in his book on "The Borer in Coorg, Munzerabad and Nuggar," mentions that an iron peg driven into the ground so that not a part of it protruded, was found, after the cleared jungle had been burned, to be no less than six inches out of the ground. There seems to be a general opinion too that land that has not been burnt will last far longer, and one experienced planter, Mr. Brooke Mockett, attributes the circumstances of all the most ancient estates in Mysore being still in existence to the fact that the land has never been burnt. Mr. Mockett also informs me that in good land, where there has been no burn, he has never had Borer severely, though for a time there was no shade over it, as he cleared down ultimately all the old forest trees that had been left for shade, and planted fresh shade. I may mention, too, that I was lately shown an estate in Coorg which had been partially cleared down and burnt off, and partly planted under the shade of the old forest trees. In the latter case the plants had never suffered from Borer or leaf disease and were always healthy, while the coffee in the former case had suffered from both, and there was certainly a most marked difference perceptible in favour of the coffee planted in the unburnt land.

There is also a great difference in my own property in favour of the coffee planted under the original forest shade as compared with the coffee on the land that was cleared down and burnt off, notwithstanding that in the latter case the most approved kinds of shade trees were afterwards planted, and that the land is now admirably shaded. It is highly important to notice these facts, both as a guide to those who have land to open, and also as regards the value of any property that may be for sale, for, after what I have mentioned, it is clear that a property planted under original forest shade, where the land has not been burnt off (for it is quite possible gradually toremove all the old forest trees and replace them with newly planted shade), must be much more valuable than one where the entire forest has been cleared down and burnt off. I now proceed to remark (1) on the course that should be pursued in the case of clearing down and burning the whole jungle and planting fresh shade, and (2) when planting under the original shade.

After the land is ready for planting the coffee, and as early as possible in the monsoon, the young shade trees should be planted in lines or avenues running from east to west, and the trees should be planted so close that they may in five or six years touch each other, and thus form what looks like a series of hedges in parallel lines. The object of this formation is that as the declination of the sun is southerly during our non-cloudy or clear sky season, a close shadow may be cast from the south to the north, so that the spaces between the lines may have a lateral shade cast on them. When the trees begin to crowd each other every other one should of course be taken, out, and this may be repeated a second time if necessary. But, besides the southerly, we have also to consider the hot westerly sun, which will strike down the avenues from, say, between two and four in the afternoon. This it is important to block out with occasional trees planted in the avenue, but it is only, of course, where the land is exposed to the afternoon sun that the avenues should be blocked with occasional trees. After fully considering the subject, I find it impossible to say even approximately at what distance the lines of trees should be planted, on account of the great variety in the gradients, and the planter must here use his own judgment; and I can only say generally that the lines of trees require to be much nearer each other on a southerly than on a northerly aspect; nearly as close on a westerly aspect as on a southerly; and on an easterly aspect, at a closer distance than on a northerly one. Someguide toward the nearness of these lines will afterwards be found in the remarks on the quantity of shade required for the various aspects.

After having planted the young shade trees, then, there comes the question of providing shade for them, for without it their growth will be very slow, and the planter would have to wait a great many years before obtaining such an amount of shade as would have an effect in lowering the temperature of the plantation. He requires then some quick-growing tree as a nurse for the good caste shade trees, and the only tree I know of that is suitable for this purpose is the quick-growing charcoal tree (Sponia Wightii)—Kanarese,gorkul mara—which springs up with the first rain after the forest has been cleared and burnt. Planters, I am aware, have, generally speaking, a great objection to this tree, and it is considered by Mr. Graham Anderson (videhis book previously quoted) as being "generally regarded as prejudicial and useless." This conclusion has probably arisen from the fact that it is certainly a bad thing to have a rapid grower, and therefore a greedy feeder on the land, and hence it has been found that the charcoal tree is bad when young. But when it has attained its full height, which in ordinary circumstances is about thirty feet (I have one specimen on my property about sixty feet high, the only one of such a size I ever saw), coffee thrives well under it. This I found to be the case on plantations on the slopes of the Nilgiri hills, where a very experienced planter told me that the tree was bad when young for coffee, but not so when old; and I there saw coffee thriving well under the shade of old charcoal trees. On my oldest plantation we only preserved one of the species (all the others having been cut down, as their good offices as nurses to better trees were no longer required), and the coffee always throve under it remarkably well. Where, too, the shade has subsequently becomedeficient we always plant charcoal as a nurse for the more desirable trees, and have never observed that it is injurious to coffee. On the whole, after a very long experience and observation of this tree, I have no hesitation in recommending it as a nurse to be thinly distributed amongst the newly-planted shade trees. It is, I may observe, too, a tree with very light branches, which, of course, can easily be removed without injury to the coffee, and its branches should be thinned away when they crowd the young shade trees, and when these have been sufficiently drawn up and expanded the charcoal tree should be entirely removed.

The subsequent treatment of the shade trees is of great importance. Their lower branches in the early years of their growth are commonly thin and weakly, and thus, of course, droop close over the coffee, and often touch it. Then the inexperienced shade tree grower begins to lop off the lower branches, with the result that he injures and bleeds the young tree, and deprives it of the nutriment it would otherwise derive from its full allowance of foliage. Some carry this trimming up to a very injurious extent, and the result is that they grow young trees with long stems and poor foliage, and a narrow spread of branches, and thus require many more trees in the land than they would if they exercised a little more patience at first. But if the tree is only left alone the evil of branches drooping downwards on to the coffee will soon disappear, as these branches will not only rise with the rising stem, but will thicken and grow upwards, instead of drooping as they did when young and weakly. And some planters, I observe, are by no means satisfied with lopping the lower boughs, but trim off branches fifteen feet from the ground. Under such a system the number of shade trees required is enormous, and the evils arising from the number of boles with their vast mass of large roots willonly be the more severely apparent as time advances. By one shade planter in Coorg I have been told that coffee there has already been suffering much from the quantity of boles and tree roots in the land, in consequence of the trimming up system and the quantity of trees required in consequence. It should also be remembered that we require our shade not only to protect our coffee from the sun's rays, but to shield it from those parching winds which sweep across the arid plains of the interior of India, and to prevent the drying up of the land. And is it not perfectly obvious that if we trim up the trees so as to produce a long stem with a small crown, the parching winds will sweep unchecked over plants and soil? There is, however, the usual proverbial exception, and that is in the case of trees growing near the bottoms of ravines with steep sides to them, and where you often want a drawn up stem and crown to cast a shadow on to a hot western or southern bank, and in such cases, of course, trimming up is necessary. Having thus discussed the planting of coffee where the forest has been cut wholly down and burnt, we will now turn to planting under the shade of the original forest trees.

In opening, then, a plantation which is to be shaded by preserving a portion of the original forest trees, the first thing to be done is to clear a wide track through the underwood from one end of the block of forest to the other, and as many tracks at right angles to the line as may facilitate your getting about and thoroughly inspecting the land to be cleared. The next thing to be done is to cut a wide track round the entire portion to be cleared, leaving a belt of from fifteen to twenty yards as a margin between the land to be cleared and the grassland lying outside the forest. This marginal belt will often be found useful for shelter in many cases, and it must be borne in mind, too, that the margins ofjungles are generally composed of land into which the forest has more recently extended itself, and are therefore poorer than the interior portion of the forest, and consequently less adapted to the growth of the coffee. Another advantage of this marginal belt is that it will prevent fires spreading from the grasslands, and that by planting thorny climbing plants on its outer edge a good fence may be formed. Another very great advantage I have found from such belts is that valuable top soil may be taken from them to manure the adjacent coffee, and especially to afford a supply of rich virgin soil when filling up vacancies in the old coffee. This last use of the marginal belt is particularly valuable, as it is both troublesome and expensive to lay down either cattle manure or top soil brought from a distance in those odd corners here and there in the plantations where vacancies are apt to occur.

After the above suggested preliminary tracks have been opened out, the whole underwood should be cleared and piled in heaps, and as far as possible, of course, from the trees which are most desirable for shade. Then the trees positively injurious to coffee should be cut down and their branches lopped and piled on the stumps of the objectionable trees, and after this a certain proportion of the less desirable kinds should be felled. All burning should be carried on in separate piles, as a running fire through the clearing would be fatal to the standing trees, and, when firing the piles they should be burnt off in detail at as great a distance from each other as possible, as the bark of many of the forest trees is easily injured by the heat arising from many blazing piles in their neighbourhood. The land having thus been thoroughly cleared, should be planted.

But by the process I have recommended much more shade will be left than will ultimately be required, and I have found that it is impossible to clear down at once allthe trees you wish to get rid of, as, if you did, you would be sure to require such a number of piles as would, when they were burnt, be sure to injure the trees to be preserved. It is therefore necessary to complete the clearing during the season following. Such trees, then, as you may wish further to remove may be thrown down between the rows of coffee, and others which may be likely to do much damage, either to the coffee or to the shade trees to be preserved, may be lopped and barked, and they should be barked as high up as a man can reach, as we have found that trees barked close to the ground die slowly.

It sometimes, however, happens that the forest land is much cut up with narrow and deep ravines, and in that case the bottoms of such ravines should be cleared off entirely, and this can be done without injury to the standing trees above, as, when the wood in the bottom of the ravine is being burnt the flames will be too distant to inflict any injury to the trees left for shade higher up the slopes, but, as I have said, great care must be taken to prevent any running fire through the shaded land; and I can speak of the effect of such a fire from a melancholy experience. In the event of bottoms of ravines being thus cleared down, it may afterwards be found desirable to supply fresh shade on the southern and western slopes, and this can easily be done on the system recommended previously for lands which have been entirely cleared down.

It is time now to turn our attention to the extremely complicated question of the quantity of shade required for the various aspects, gradients, and soils we have to deal with, and let us in the first place begin with some remarks on the effects of aspect as regards heat.

In considering, then, aspect as regards sun and heat, I may observe that it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of taking into account the immense variation in temperature on the different exposures. For the effect that thesun's rays have on certain aspects in heating the soil and drying up the plant, are such as would be extremely difficult to believe, had the facts not been verified by competent observers, and with the aid of the thermometer. And as regards northern and southern slopes in particular, we shall find that the difference between one exposure and the other is just what constitutes the difference between green and dried grass, and between leaves luxuriantly green and leaves dry and withered. And that the first is literally true may be seen by anyone in the months of January and February, for in these months you will see grass on northern aspects green, and, comparatively speaking, fresh, while, even in a valley sheltered from drying winds, the grass on the southern slopes is completely withered. And you will see an equally striking difference in the coffee plants—those on the northern slopes full of health and life, while those on the southern ones are yellow, dried up, and sickly. Even in parts of the district where coffee will not thrive without a considerable amount of shade, you will always find the plants thrive well (with little or even none) on a northern bank, and look much better than on a moderately shaded southern bank. Nor in the nursery is the effect of aspect at all less striking. A nursery on a northern slope will require far less water, and far less shade over the plants, than one with a southern exposure. But the late Mr. MacIvor, superintendent of the Government Cinchona plantations on the Nilgiri hills, has tested the value of northern and southern aspects in a way which accurately judges their respective values. He accordingly tells us that, "The reason why a northern exposure in these latitudes is beneficial is from the fact that it is much more moist during the dry season than a southern aspect, because the sun's declension is southerly during the dry and cloudless season of the year, and thus, on the northern slopes, the rays of the sun do not penetrateand parch the soil. A northern aspect has also the advantage of preserving a much more uniform temperature than a southern aspect, because the excessive radiation and evaporation in the southern slopes greatly reduces the temperature at night, while in the day they are heated to excess by the action of the sun's rays striking the surface nearly at right angles. The practical effects of aspect on the plants are so great that they cannot be overlooked with impunity, and, in order to impress this on the minds of all those who may have the selection of localities for cinchona cultivation, I may mention that the difference of temperature is almost incredible; for example, at this elevation (probably about 7,000 feet) a thermometer laid on the surface of the southern face of a hill exposed to the sun at 3 p.m., will frequently indicate from 130° to 160° Fahr.; the same thermometer, if left in its position, and examined at 6 a.m., will generally be observed to indicate from 30° to 40°, while on a similar slope, if selected with a northern aspect, the thermometer, under the same circumstances, at 3 p.m., will generally indicate from 70° to 80°, and at 6 a.m. from 40° to 50°."

There is, then, about twice as much heat upon a southern as on a northern aspect, and, of course, a corresponding difference as regards the effect of sun and drought on plant and soil, and it is therefore obvious that our shade policy should be governed accordingly.

Back to Index Next