or rather headmen on a plantation, obtain from the planter at the end of the season "advances" to enable them to return in the year following with so many coolies. It is inconvenient, perhaps sometimes it may be impossible, for them to do so, and the advances are lost, or they may be recovered, but only at a ruinous loss of time and outlay. When a tea district, then, is so fortunately situated as to have at its command a plentiful supply of indigenous labour, half its difficulties are over and half the expenses of working are saved. There is no loss on "advances," no loss on the enforced supply of rice or rations, no separate medical attendance, and no outlay on transport. There is a certain fixed rate of wages which the various gangs of labourers relieving each other periodically, as their engagements terminate, receive when their work is done. Of course in all cases there is the expense of housing, putting up "cooly lines" as they are called; but this is a known and easily calculable expenditure, and does not weigh so heavily as those which are always unexpected yet always recurring. The lines, too, which are necessarily substantially built to withstand the heavy rains, form part of the fixed property of a well-found estate.

THE CAPITAal required.

I may here be expected to give some idea, first of the initial cost of a tea garden, and secondly as to the revenue which may be expected to arise from it after that initial cost has been incurred. But I do so with extreme reluctance, not because I have no practical experience, but rather because that practical experience has taught me that estimates, however wisely and moderately drawn up, cannot be relied on to hold good over a period of three or four years the required interval between seed time and harvest-in the face of so many causes wholly out of the planter's control, which may or may not operate. Take this question of silver alone, if my readers are not sufficiently bored with it already. A very able authority, reviewing the position, considers it probable that this may rise to 59d. per ounce or its American parity. But, on the other hand, if silver were to rise to such an extent, many mines which have been thrown out of working owing to the low price of their products would be reopened and their supplies let loose to flood the market. This is no minor factor, as I have endeavoured to show, in the tea planter's outlook. But all this may seem over cautious, or rather what I have said of tea may be predicated more or less strongly of all other enterprises, whether in India or elsewhere. I

will therefore go on to the first of my points, viz., the initial cost of a tea garden. Quoting from a paper1 which ought to be, and I believe is, well posted on the subject: "A good property for investors should have a capital not exceeding 500 rupees per acre. We know that many fine gardens have not cost as much as this, and we could also point to some which have cost nearly three times this amount. As a general rule 500 rupees per acre should be the value of a good garden."

The REVENUE TO Be looked for.

On the other point, viz., the revenue which may be expected from this outlay, I have recourse to a tabular statement which gives the cost of the production of a tea estate in Ceylon, of 250 acres, in full bearing, with a good factory, adequate machinery, and fuel on the estate, at various rates of yield per acre. The prices are expressed in hundredth parts of the rupee or "rupee cents," and include carriage to Colombo and shipment there, in mercantile phrase "f. o. b. Colombo." At a yield of 150 lbs. to the acre, the price would be 50 cents per pound; 200 lbs. to the acre, 46 cents; 250 lbs. 40 cents; 300 lbs. 37 cents; 350 lbs. 35 cents; 400 lbs. 32} cents; 450 lbs. 31 cents; 500 lbs. 29 cents. On a larger estate of say 400 acres, the prices might be reduced by one or two cents per lb., the average yield in Ceylon being taken at 300-350 lbs. an acre, and the price of Ceylon tea put on board at Colombo, at 33-37 cents, or 6d. per lb.

RESULTS RECENTLY OBTAINED IN TRAVANCORE.

I need not trouble my readers by going over this matter as it results in the different districts of India, but briefly noting that the average yield in Assam may be taken at 280 lbs. per acre, I will give some remarkable results which have been recently achieved in Travancore, the youngest competitor, as I have already said, for the first place as a tea district. I give them because there were not here, as in Ceylon and other older countries, the artificial adjuncts of a good factory, adequate machinery, or even skilled labour. They were purely experimental, and conducted on land which had been four years under coffee.

I. Tea plants-indigenous, Travancore, yielded in their sixth year of growth 608 lbs. per acre.

The Tropical Agriculturist, No. 882.

2. The same variety, in their third year of growth, yielded 269 lbs. per acre.

3. Assam hybrid variety yielded in their seventh year 393 lbs. per acre.

The price obtained was also very exceptionally high, but need not here be quoted, except generally to show that quantity was not obtained at the expense of quality. Nor do I think this gives much criterion for or against its continuance. A certain tea hits off the popular taste for the moment, fetches a high price, but is, or may be, discarded next season in favour of a newer brand. Only the other day (October, 1890) I read the following:

"In these days of cheap tea, it is interesting to know that the choicest products of Eastern gardens still realise high prices. The sensation of last week's London tea market was the sale of a parcel of newly-imported tea from the Estate, Ceylon, which was 'knocked-down' at Mincing Lane to the firm of William Ford and Sons, Leith, at the extraordinary price of 30s. 6d. per lb." 1

But such fancy prices possess no charms except for the compilers of those wonderful pieces of fugitive literature, prospectuses. They are too fragile for everyday wear. What is required is a good allround price for tea raised at the cheapest rate compatible with fair treatment, and large quantity will never make up for deficiency in quality.

Travancore and Tinnevelly, which together occupy the southern extremity of the Indian Peninsula, are already well-known to Ceylon planters as the cradle whence they have been accustomed to derive their supplies of labour, and they have now obtained a more practical share of their attention by the occupation of the hills which form their dividing boundary. These hills receive the rains brought by the wind-driven clouds from both the coasts of India, and to this must be attributed the large yields I have noted-periodical moisture being necessary to bring out the periodical "flushes" of leaves. To this regular distribution of the annual rainfall is attributable the immunity from fever which prevails in the forests farther north, which are dry for seven months of the year, and subject to a tremendous rainfall-some 150 inches or thereby-in the remaining five; and seeing that the price paid for native labour is four annas (6d.) per day per man, without rations or other allowances, we may expect tea to be here produced at a less cost than that calculated for Ceylon, as the area dealt with is more extended.

'Even this price has been more recently very largely exceeded.

CONCLUSION.

But the mystical letters, Q.E.D., which follow the successful solution of the propositions of old Euclid, have yet to earn their place. I may not here institute elaborate comparisons, or pit the prospects of one tea district of India against those of another. I may only reiterate my proposition, that the tea industry has entered upon a more difficult but a more healthy phase of its existence, where excellence will depend, not upon fortuitous or fluctuating conditions, but upon the stable basis of cheap production, combined with the excellence of the product itself. Qui palmam meruit ferat.

GEORGE CADELL.

OF

COMET LORE.

F all celestial bodies, none, perhaps, have been the subject of so much curious speculation, both among the learned and unlearned, as comets. This is but natural. The appearance in the sky of an object so different from sun, moon, and stars cannot fail to awaken feelings of alarm, wonder, curiosity, or interest, according to the knowledge and intelligence of the beholder, the circumstances in which he is placed, and the disposition of the age in which he lives. Although they have long been recognised as material bodies obeying the laws of motion and gravitation in their passage through space, there is still enough of mystery about them to interest both the scientific inquirer and the ordinary observer.

It is not difficult to realise the alarm which the unexpected advent of a large and brilliant comet would occasion to a people unaccustomed to seek natural causes for unusual phenomena. As the sun sinks in the west a strange light is seen in the sky-a star, but yet not a star, or something more than a star. Soon an ill-defined, spectral appearance is perceived to be associated with it. As twilight deepens the form appears more distinct, and lengthens out, and eventually is revealed to the terror-stricken spectators as a flaming, fiery sword approaching the earth from the unfathomable depths of heavenly space. The Deity, who they imagined did not concern himself with the affairs of men, has awoke from his indifference, and has dispatched this dire instrument of vengeance to punish them for their sins. At length they see it sink under the horizon and disappear, and they feel they have a respite. The punishment is not for them. But the next evening the appearance is repeated, and the changing aspect of the celestial visitor is watched with feelings of mingled hope and fear. When its size is seen to be diminishing, and it is evidently receding from this world, opinion changes. It was not an actual weapon of destruction, but a portent, a warning of some great event to come-some calamity-for the natural inclination of the human mind is to interpret any unexpected change in the course of events as for the worse rather than for the better. Soon a monarch dies, a pestilence breaks out, or news comes of a war or revolution, and to the comet is attributed the prognostication, perhaps the cause of the event.