APPENDIX  III.
 

           A Planter's "Work and Life in Ceylon.



\ The following useful information was prepared, by the Planters' Asso¬

    ciation of Ceylon, and circulated at the late Indian and Colonial

    Exhibition at South Kensington in 1880.





                        TEA  IN  CEYLON.



IN the minds of the  British public the name of Ceylon has  been chiefly

associated with the production of coffee and spices ;  the latter in poetry,

but in poetry only, imparting their fragrance to the very air.

  While  Ceylon coffee and  Ceylon spices are  of superior  quality, and

remain most important articles of trade, it is  Ceylon tea that is rapidly

becoming the staple product, and the one for  which the island will soon

be most celebrated.

  Seldom or never has an industry made such progress, or a new article

of consumption overcome by its intrinsic merit the opposition of vested

trade  interests, as has Ceylon tea.

  In 1873 the exports of tea from  Ceylon were 231b.; in 1885, they have

been 4| million lb.; in 1886 they will be about 10  million lb.; and in

the near future 40 million lb. will  be exported.

  The area under tea in the island is rapidly  extending, and already

about  120,000 acres have  been planted.  Over 700 European planters

and 150,000 Indian and Sinhalese  labourers arc engaged in the cultiva¬

tion.  Some of the plantations are but little above sea level, while others

run up to an elevation of 6,000 feet.  The average altitude  of the larger

districts is about  4,000  feet-above  sea level, an elevation at which the

climate is pleasant and  most healthy.  A railway runs up into the hills

and a good system of cartroacls exists, so that  most of the estates arc

already within a day's journey from Colombo—the capital and shipping

port.

  At a time when dietetics has almost become a science, when  purity

and cleanliness in food and beverages are so  strongly insisted on, it is

strange that greater attention has not  been called to the more than

doubtful  nature of much of that which is consumed as tea.

  It has been said that if to be an Englishman is to eat beef, to be an

Englishwoman is  to drink tea.   True it is that the article  which in the

sixteenth century was a luxury, costing ten guineas a pound and con*

sumed by a hundred people, has  in  the nineteenth century become a

necessity, costing  two shillings a pound and consumed by millions.

  Did the people of Britain thoroughly understand the difference between

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