its weight in
determining the value of a plantation must obviously be very great; so
much so, that planters, when going round an estate in Mysore, are
generally more taken up with observing the shade than the coffee
underneath it. And I cannot, perhaps, better illustrate the effects of bad
caste trees than by mentioning what a neighbour said to me when I was
going round his plantation. He pointed to the coffee under a bad caste
tree and said, "The coffee there gave a good crop this year, but the trees
are suffering now, and will give a poor crop next year; while the coffee
under the good caste trees there gave a good crop this year, are looking
well now, and will give a good crop next year." Such, then, is the
difference, and sometimes it is much more, between bad and good caste
shade trees. And when the reader remembers that Mr. Graham Anderson has
said that he has experienced more misfortune of every kind owing to the
presence of bad caste shade trees, it is evident that a valuator should
attach a much higher value to a plantation shaded entirely with good caste
shade trees than to one with bad or indifferent kinds of shade trees. For
the latter mean diminished crops, and more Borer and leaf disease, while
the former lead to the very opposite effects.

Manurial facilities have next to be taken into consideration, and here we
shall find a very great difference between estates. Some, but I am afraid
very few, have spare, odd bits of jungle land which the proprietors have
acquired for the purpose, or angles of the original forest which they have
left uncleared, from which valuable top soil may be procured, while others
are in parts of the country where the grazing for cattle is good, and
where cattle manure can sometimes be bought from the natives. But many
estates have no top soil resources, and but poor facilities of making bulk
manure, and all these points require to be carefully considered when
valuing an estate.

But besides all the previously mentioned points, there are the labour
facilities, the water supply, and lastly, but by no means leastly, the
concentration of all the points of most importance in one central point to
be taken into consideration. It often happens on estates that the nursery
is in one place, the pulping-house half a mile from that, and the bungalow
half a mile from either. But is it not obvious that an estate is more
valuable when the bungalow, drying-ground, pulper, and nursery are all
withi