way to the number of glasses their fathers have lifted with it. This,
if authenticated by scientific evidence, would be an interesting
example of heredity, but I suspect it to be an exaggeration. The
bar-room in the hotel at Kandy was certainly of vast dimensions, and
was continuously packed to overflowing during the cricket week, and an
unusual notice conspicuously displayed, asking "gentlemen to refrain
from singing in the passages and bedrooms at night," seemed to hint
that undue conviviality was not unknown in the hotel; but it must be
remembered that these young fellows work very hard, and lead most
solitary existences. An assistant-manager on a tea estate may see no
white man for weeks except his own boss, or "P. D.," so it is
perfectly natural that when they foregather with other young
Englishmen of their own age during Colombo race week, or Kandy cricket
week, they should grow a little uproarious, or even at times exceed
the strict bounds of moderation, and small blame to them!

Ceylon was formerly a great coffee-producing island, and the
introduction of tea culture only dates from about 1882. In 1870 a
fungus began attacking the coffee plantations, and in ten years this
fungus killed practically all the coffee bushes, and reduced the
planters to ruin. Instead of whining helplessly over their
misfortunes, the planters had the energy and enterprise to replace
their ruined coffee bushes with tea shrubs, and Ceylon is now one of
the most important sources of the world's tea-supply. Tea-making--by
which I do not imply the throwing of three spoonfuls of dried leaves
into a teapot, but the transformation of the green leaf of a camellia
into the familiar black spirals of our breakfast-tables--is quite an
art in itself. The "tea-maker" has to judge when the freshly gathered
leaves are sufficiently withered for him to begin the process, into
the complications of which I will not attempt to enter. I was much