The farm plantation is called a “Cinnamon Garden.” In Ceylon these gardens are the most famous in the world, the owners living like princes. Some of the carved wood in these homes are literally worth their weight in gold. There are certain trees and species that are taken in charge by the royal surgeons. Such have the official stamp indicating what their medical value is. This cinnamon commonly sells at $15 to $25 per pound and sometimes as high as $100. While the ordinary China cassia, handled by our grocers, sells at wholesale at six or seven cents a pound. The medicinal cassia, however, has about the value for cooking purposes that the ordinary Saigon cassia has. Many cinnamon gardens are being rooted up and planted to tea, however, as tea culture is more profitable. A sandy loam soil mixed with humus matter is favorable for the culture of cinnamon, and old, worn, coffee estates are often used in Ceylon for cinnamon plantations. [Illustration: COLOMBO, CEYLON] [Illustration: A PLANTATION IN CEYLON] The cinnamon crop has few enemies. Cattle, goats, and squirrels eat the growing shoots while tender. The principal insect enemy is a minute beetle that breeds in the leaves and sometimes does injury by retarding the growth and rendering the wood unpeelable, as well as unhealthy. A red worm, about two inches long, eats its way up the center of some old and unhealthy sticks growing on partially decayed roots, but the injury from the insect is scarcely worth considering. White ants eat dead roots but seldom injure living wood, and they are to some extent enemies of all other insects which prey upon cinnamon trees. They build their nests around live branches, but this does not interfere with their growth. Crows and wood pigeons devour the berries with great eagerness, but in the process of digestion the productive qualities of the seed are not injured and by this means the seed is scattered over a large extent of country. Plants may be raised from the seed or by “laying.” The culture of the best kind, which is the true C. Zeylanicum, a cultivated Curanda or honey cinnamon (called penne rasse Kuroondu by the Sinhalese) is from the Kadirona, Ekla and Muradana gardens, between Colombo and Negunbo, which occupy a tract of country upwards of ten miles in length and in a winding circuit; as well as from the Maratuwa and Beruwala gardens, and those of Galle and Matara. There is also a Cingalese bark found in the archipelago, which is very pungent and much resembles the true bark from Ceylon. It brings a fair price on the market, and is more aromatic than that of Ceylon. There are several kinds of it, some of it bringing an exorbitant price, and it is cultivated solely for royal use. The outer bark is never removed from it and for that reason it has the dark Java color. It, like the Saigon, is exported in 500-pound bundles.