PISS DE TERRE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—The following experience of a coffee-planter in Mysore may be of interest. He writes :- "I have been trying an experiment in piso de terre, and so far it has succeeded beyond all my expectations, but I have only begun. The walls, which are for coolie lines, are to be 90ft. long, 6ft. high, and 18in. thick. My trouble is that sawyers are unprocurable, although I have any amount of fine timber ready to saw. Before my carpenters left work here, for want of sawn timber, 1 had a mould or shuttering made 7ft. long, 2ft. high, and lift: wide. A piece bf wall of this size is made daily. You can imagine how slowly the work proceeds at this rate. The shuttering is removed on the morning after the ramming has been finished. I suppose I ought to have had special shuttering made for the corners. We wonder what will happen to the unfinished walls when some day, as we hope —we want rain for the blossom—a terrific thunderstorm oomes. At the present moment the weather is intensely dry, with a blazing and burning sun. I never thought that earth of the quality that I am using a ould bind, and feared having to cart earth at great expense. The process being new to them, the natives do not look at it with favourable eyes. They say, It is very slow.' We leave the shuttering up about eighteen hours. How long is it left in England?"
I imagine that my Indian correspondent is unaware of what I believe to be a fact, viz., that the shuttering can be removed and re-erected so soon as the piece of wall has been thoroughly
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