Not very many planters can say, certainly, how often their gardens have flushed in a season, because they are picked so irregularly, and no account of the different flushes kept. Enquiring on this point, when I was in Cachar some thirteen years ago, 9 to 24 were the minimum and maximum numbers given me at different gardens, showing how little was really known about it. Such knowledge as I have on the subject is mostly derived from carefully kept records of my own garden in the Chittagong district. The plantation is all worked in sections, in the way described previously, and the dates given in the table below are the days each flush was finished (that is, the picking was finished) during the seasons 1869 and 1870; 1869 being carried up to the end of the season, 1870 up to the date I wrote the first edition of this Essay. In the table it will be observed there is a great difference between the two years. The section for which the dates are given was planted from seed beds in the month of June, 1866. In 1869 it was therefore only three years old. This will partly account for the first flush occurring a month earlier in 1870, as it was then a year older; but fortunate early rains in 1870 had also much to do with it. --------+-------------+----------+-------------+------------- | 1869 | Interval | 1870 | Interval Flushes +-------------+ in days +-------------+ in days | Dates | | Dates | --------+-------------+----------+-------------+------------- 1 | March 22 | .. | February 22 | .. 2 | May 6 | 44 | March 30 | 35 3 | „ 29 | 23 | April 13 | 10 4 | June 11 | 12 | „ 25 | 12 5 | „ 23 | 12 | May 5 | 9 6 | July 5 | 11 | „ 14 | 9 7 | „ 17 | 12 | „ 25 | 11 8 | „ 31 | 14 | June 4 | 9 9 | August 10 | 9 | „ 12 | 8 10 | „ 21 | 11 | „ 22 | 10 11 | Sept. 2 | 11 | July 1 | 8 12 | „ 12 | 10 | „ 8 | 7 13 | „ 25 | 13 | „ 16 | 8 14 | October 9 | 13 | „ 25 | 9 15 | „ 22 | 13 | August 2 | 7 16 | Nov. 2 | 10 | „ 11 | 9 17 | „ 11 | 9 | „ 21 | 10 18 | „ 19 | 8 | „ 29 | 8 19 | Dec. 4 | 14 | Sept 7 | 8 20 | .. | .. | „ 18 | 11 21 | .. | .. | „ 27 | 9 22 | .. | .. | October 5 | 7 --------+-------------+----------+-------------+------------- Average intervals | Nearly 14| |Very little between Flushes. | days. | .. |over 10 days.