The Tropical Agriculturist. The Agricultural Journal of Ceylon January 1939

The standard of education of the majority of peasant agrculturists in the Tropical Empire is such that the important publicity medium of the printed word cannot be employed to advantage and for the benefit of those who are unable to read other means of making known the results of the scientific investgations of Departments of Agriculture must be found. [...] The quick-growing roots of cover crops entirely monopolize: the water content in the first three inches of the surface soil and thus effectively prevent the advance of the slow growing lateral roots of the newly planted young trees into the 'covered space beyond the drip of the crowns. [...] In order to ascertain the distribution of the fibrous roots Rogers and Vyvyan (7) of East Mailing employed the method of removing the soil of the whole root area in definite blocks and determined the amount of the fibre in each block. [...] The five soils studied were the black heavy loams of Tunukkai similar to the black cotton soils of India ; the white calcareous loams of Delft Island of marked similarity to the chalk soils of England ; the deep red loams of the Habantota district and the allied reddish brown loams of the Tagalla district ; and the light sandy loams of parts of the Eastern Province. [...] SUMMARY In this paper the profile and analytical data of five less extesively occurring but characteristic soil types of the dry zone-T - the black heavy loams of Tunukkai similar to the black cotton soils of India the light grey calcareous loams of Delft Island similar to the chalk soils of Britain the brick-red and brown deep loams of the dry south-eastern parts of the Island and the li