y of potash required, and
its supply from decomposing stones in the land, that the potash does not
require to be taken into account, we shall find that our nitrogen and
phosphoric acid can be far more cheaply supplied by fish, or by a mixture
of bone-meal and oil-cake than by farmyard manure, and should it be found
that potash does require to be added, we could obtain it more cheaply from
ashes or kainit. Then in order to provide the padding that farmyard manure
supplies, and to furnish nitrogen in a slowly-acting form, we could
collect dry leaves, twigs from jungle trees, ferns, and any other
available vegetable matter, form them into a compost with some earth, or
jungle top soil, and apply the mixture to the land. With such a compost as
I have suggested, bone-meal or fish-manure in small quantity might be
mixed, and we should then have a very good substitute for all the chemical
and physical advantages to be derived from the very best kind of farmyard
manure. But there is another way of arriving at the same end, which is
open to many planters, and that is by collecting top soil from the fringe
of jungle commonly left round the plantation, or from the uncultivated
jungle of the estate, or from adjacent pieces of jungle land. And such
pieces of land varying from ten to twenty acres can commonly be purchased,
and can be used to supply top soil. This, of course, has in it much
vegetable matter in various stages of decay, and a mixture of it with a
small quantity of bone-meal would form a manure superior, as I shall
afterwards show when I come to treat of top soil, to farmyard manure
chemically, and superior to it from a physical point of view. To such
local manurial resources I would call particular attention, as planters
have hitherto relied far too exclusively on cattle manure, and imported
manures, such as bones, fish, and oil-cake, and it is evident that we
could dispense with much of all these manures if we made a full use of the
resources I have recommended. In concluding my remarks on cattle manure I
may observe that it is both costly to supply and to apply to the land. It
is difficult, of course, to make exact calculations on the subject, as the
facilities for supplying litter vary so much, but generally speaking it
costs from 70 to 80 rupees an acre if we manure at about the rate of a
third of a bushel per tree.

I now turn to a consideration of the value of jungle top soil, a manure to
which I have only lately gi