792 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



For May, 1887, the quotations had advanced to lis. and lis. 5d. This 

 case is especially worthy of notice, because it constitutes another ex- 

 ample of a great and rapid decline in the price of a standard and 

 valuable commodity in the world's commerce, and for which all the 

 facts being clearly understood it is not possible to assign any other 

 cause than that of production in excess of any current demand for 

 consumption, and which in turn has been solely contingent on the em- 

 ployment, under novel conditions, of improved methods for overcom- 

 ing territorial and climatic difficulties. 



Concurrently with the fall in the price of nitrate of soda, saltpeter, 

 or nitrate of potash, also notably declined from 28s. 3c?. in 1880 to 21s. 

 in 1887 (for English refined), a fact which seems to find a sufficient ex- 

 planation in the circumstance that nitrate of soda can be used to a cer- 

 tain extent as a substitute for nitrate of potash, and that the export 

 of the latter from India, the country of chief supply, increased from 

 352,995 cwt. in 1881 to 451,917 cwt. in 1885, or 36 per cent. 



Paper. A quarter of a century ago, or less, paper was made almost 

 exclusively from the fibers of cotton and linen rags ; and with an enor- 

 mous and continually increasing demand, paper and rags not only 

 rapidly increased in price, but continually tended to increase, and thus 

 greatly stimulated effort for the discovery and utilization of new 

 fibrous materials for the manufacture of paper. These efforts have 

 been so eminently successful that immense quantities of pulp suitable 

 for the manufacture of paper are now made from the fibers of wood, 

 straw, and various grasses, and so cheaply that the prices of fair 

 qualities of book-paper have declined since the year 1872 to the ex- 

 tent of fully 50 per cent, while in the case of ordinary " news " the 

 decline has been even greater. Rags, although still extensively used, 

 have, by the competitive supply of substitute materials, and a conse- 

 quent comparative lack of demand, been also greatly cheapened. 



Quinine. But in no one article has the decline in recent years 

 been more extraordinary and thoroughly capable of explanation than 

 in the case of sulphate of quinine, a standard chemical preparation 

 used extensively all over the world for medicinal purposes. In 1865 

 the highest price of sulphate of quinine in the English market was 

 4s. 4d. ($1.07) per ounce, which gradually advanced to 9s. 6c?. in 1873, 

 reacting to 6s. 9c?. in 1876. In the subsequent year, owing to an in- 

 terruption in the exportation of cinchona-bark from South America 

 by civil war in New Granada, and by low water in the Magdalena 

 River, the price advanced to the unprecedently high figure of 16s. 6c?. 

 ($4.70) per ounce, receding to 13s. in 1879, and 12s. in 1880. In 1883 

 identically the same article sold in Europe for 3s. 6c?. per ounce, and 

 in 1885 for 2s. 6c?., a result entirely attributable to the successful and 

 extensive introduction and growth of the cinchona-tree in the British 

 and Dutch East Indies, and to the further very curious circumstance 

 that, while the cinchona-barks from South America the product of 



