sembly is an
additional illustration of the value of that institution in pressing
matters of importance on the attention of the Government. The returns of
the rainfall were obtained from various planters on the section of country
investigated by Mr. Anderson.

CHAPTER XVI.

HOW TO MAKE AN ESTATE PAY, AND THE ORDER OF THE WORK.

The first step towards making a plantation pay is to eliminate all sources
of loss, and the first point claiming attention relates to the
advisability of abandoning all the spots on an estate which are difficult
to keep up, sometimes from defects of soil, sometimes of aspect, and more
often of both. At present you often find, just as you do in the case of
farmers in Scotland, that planters often make money on the good land to
throw much of it away on the bad, and the people who thus act simply do so
from want of strength of mind; for everyone knows that it costs more to
keep up inferior coffee than it does to keep up the best, and that the
latter yields good and certain crops, while the former yields poor and
uncertain crops. And it is equally well known that highly manured and well
situated coffee on good land can always be relied on to give a paying
crop, even in the very worst season, while coffee on poor land with a bad
aspect is simply at the mercy of the season. And one of the oldest
planters in Mysore told me that, some thirty years ago, when his land was,
comparatively speaking, unexhausted, if the blossom showers were
favourable he got a good crop all over the estate, but that if they were
unfavourable, the best situated coffee on the best land still gave a fair
crop, while the rest of the plantation produced very little. The maximum
of high and safe profits, then, will be obtained where the land kept up is
all good, well situated, and well manured. There are, of course,
occasional spots of half an acre or so in the very best lands which must
by no means be abandoned. On the contrary, they should be kept up at any
cost, as they would be the means of spreading weeds into the surrounding
land, and the places that should be abandoned are continuous pieces or
blocks on the outside of the coffee to be kept up. I may remind the reader
here that where an outside block can, as it were, be sliced off one side
of the estate, an application can be made to the Government to have it
measured and classed in future as land thrown out of cultivation, which is
liable to a reduced rate of taxati