CEYLON. Coffee planting in Ceylon was an important industry for a century, until the so-called Ceylon leaf disease attacked the plantations in 1869, and a few years later had practically destroyed all the trees of the country. Although coffee raising has continued since then, there has been, especially since the beginning of the twentieth century, a steady decline in acreage. There were 4,875 acres under cultivation in 1903, 2,433 acres in 1907, 1,389 in 1912, and 941.5 in 1919. Only 2,200 pounds were produced in 1917. However, the climate and soil of Ceylon seem adapted to coffee culture, and the experimental stations at Peradeniya and Anuradhapura have been experimenting in recent years with _robusta_, _canephora_, _Ugandae_, and a _robusta_ hybrid for the purpose of reviving the industry in the country. Ceylon is one of the oldest coffee-growing countries, the Arabs having experimented with it there, according to legend, long before the Portuguese seized the island in 1505. The Dutch, who gained control in 1658, continued the cultivation, and in 1690 introduced more systematic methods. They sent a few pounds in 1721 to Amsterdam, where the coffee brought a higher price than Java or Mocha. However, it was not until after the British occupied the island in 1796, that coffee growing was carried on extensively. The first British-owned upland plantation was started in 1825 by Sir Edward Barnes; and for more than fifty years thereafter coffee was one of the island's leading products. An orgy of speculation in coffee growing in Ceylon, in which L5,000,000 sterling are said to have been invested, culminated in 1845 in the bursting of the coffee bubble, and hundreds were ruined. The peak of the export trade was reached in 1873, when 111,495,216 pounds of coffee were sent out of the country. Even then, the plantations were suffering severely from the leaf disease, which had appeared in 1869; and by 1887, the coffee tree had practically disappeared from Ceylon. Ceylon's day in coffee was a cycle of fifty-odd years. [Illustration: ROBUSTA COFFEE GROWING ON THE SUZANNAH ESTATE, COCHIN-CHINA] FRENCH INDO-CHINA. Coffee culture in French Indo-China is a comparatively small factor in international trade, although production is on the increase, particularly from those plantations planted to _robusta_, _liberica_, and _excelsa_ varieties. The average annual export for the five-year period ended with 1918 was 516,978 pounds, nearly all of it going to France. The first experiments with coffee growing were begun in 1887, near Hanoi in Tonkin. The seeds were of the _arabica_ variety, brought from Reunion, and the production from the first years was distributed throughout the country to foster the industry. Eventually _arabica_ was found unsuitable to the soil and climate, and experiments were begun with _robusta_ and other hardier types.