Vol. III. No. 53. 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 



131 



Molascuit. 



The followinor note relatinjr to the manufacture 

 of molascuit is taken from the Demerara Argosy of 

 April t). Special reference is made to the fact that, 

 this product enjoys a decided advantage over other 

 sugared stock foods on account of the absorbent 

 properties of the niegass: — 



Mr. George Hughes, the patentee of the now fanioua 

 cattle food, molascuit, lias written to a correspondent in 

 Denierara suggesting that manufacturers in this colony sliould 

 turn out an article containing at least .").5 per cent, of sugar. 

 In support of this suggestion, he states that there are on thf 

 market many sugared stock foods, but as these are made of 

 materials that do not possess the absorbent qualities erpial to 

 a niegass meal, their sugar content is lower. He thinks, 

 therefore, tliat molascuit manufacturers should push this 

 advantage to the utmost by producing molascuit containing 

 at least .5.5 i>er cent, of sugar, thus rendering competition 

 by those other stock foods impossible, except from the 

 disadvantageous position of an admittedly inferior article. 



United States Concession to Cuba. 



The following is an extract from an article on the 

 subject of the Cuban reciprocity treaty that appeareii 

 in the Louisiana Planter of March 12, 1904: — 



From all these data we see tliat our reciprocity treaty 

 with Cuba has been a very decided boomerang, doing no 

 good to the Cubans, but returning to us and inHicting much 

 injury upon us. It has not benefited the Cubans by making 

 Cuban sugar worth more in that island than similar goods in 

 San Domingo, or Jamaica, or Trinidad. On the contrary, 

 the prices of sugars have been lowered and this decline has 

 forced down prices throughout the West Indies generally and 

 now, on tlie part of the Cubans themselve.s, in order to cover 

 the deficiency in revenues arising from the diminished duties 

 levied upon their chief imports from the United States, they 

 simply elevated the duties 20 per cent, or more, and now 

 collect as much as ever on the bulk of American productions 

 entering the island. 



A New Sugar-producing Plant. 



Several references have recently been made in 

 scientific and other journals to a new source of sugar. 

 We reproduce the following account of the plant from 

 the Gardeners' Chronicle of March 19: — 



In the early jiart of 1901 the authorities at Kew, as we 

 learn from Mr. Hillier, received from H.B.M. Consul at 

 Asuncion, Paraguay, fragments of a Composite plant 

 credited with possessing a remarkable sweetening propertv, 

 a few leaves being sufficient to sweeten a strong cup 

 of tea or coffee, giving also a pleasant aromatic flavour. 

 The [ilant was discovered growing in the highlands of 

 Amambaya and near the source of the river Monday by 

 Dr. Bertoni, and described by iiiin in Revista de Agronomia, ii, 

 pli. 35-7 (lt<99) under the name Ettpaton'iim rehaudimium. 

 From the meagre material received at Kew, it was found 

 that the smallest jiortion caused a persistent sweetness in 

 ■the mouth, and further that the floral structure of the 

 .specimen agreed more nearly with the genus Sfevia than 

 with Enjinforiiiiii, its aftinity being with .S'. colliiiu, Gardner. 

 The foregoing facts are gathered from the Knv Bulhtln for 

 1901, p. 173; and we find upon in(|uiiy that living plants 

 f'r full herbarium specimens are still desired at Kew to 

 facilitate the identification of this interesting plant. 



THE MISCHIEF OF WRONG THEORIES. 



The following interesting extract is taken from 

 the MontJibj Weiither Review of the Weather Bureau 

 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for December 

 1903 :— 



During the past century there has Ijeen such steady 

 progress in all branches of science that the more intelligent 

 portion of the community has abandoned those notions 

 with regard to astrology, alchemy, spontaneous generation, 

 witchcraft, and other philosophies, that were formerly accepted 

 by the most learned. The diffusion of education has raised 

 the children of the present generation above the level of the 

 philosophers of a former generation. And yet we have seen 

 it demonstrated again and again that the popular majority 

 does not fully appreciate the extent of our present knowledge 

 of the laws of the weather, and is still liable to resort to 

 imscientific methods in the hope of accomplishing that to 

 which science has not yet attained. 



We have seen communities in America and Australia 

 carried away with the idea that cannonading can produce 

 rain, or in Europe that the ringing of church bells or the 

 offering of i)rayers can avert droughts and floods. In 

 Southern Europe the agriculturists are but just recovering 

 from the strange belief that hail can be [)revented by shooting 

 rings of smoke toward the clouds. During the past ten 

 years a wealthy engineer of Russia has devoted his fortune to 

 the conversion of the people to his idea that the moon 

 controls the weather, and so .seriously does his advocacy of 

 this error affect the uneducated agricultural community that 

 the Director of the weather service at Odessa (Klossovsky) 

 has gone to the trouble of publishing an elaborate statement 

 of the errors in fact and theory committed by this engineer. 

 He shows very clearly that Demtchinsky's .method of 

 predicting the weather by lunar periods amounts to nothing 

 more than i)redicting an average condition, an average which 

 very rarely occurs, whereas the departures from it are very 

 fre(pient. The verifications of these predictions are like the 

 combinations in an ordinary game of chance, where there is 

 an equal number of heads and tails or hits and misses. 



As the collection of meteorological statistics depends .so 

 largely upon the voluntary work of thousands of unpaid 

 observers, it is to be feared that the good work we are doing 

 in America may be seriously interrui)ted, if erroneous views 

 are allowed to have an influence in this country as profound 

 as they seem to Lave in Southern Russia. 



We cannot repeat too often and too clearly the general 

 proposition that meteorology is to be advanced only by 

 studying in details the effects on the atmosphere of insolation, 

 radiation, the diurnal rotation and annual revolution of the 

 earth, and the presence of continents and oceans. 



RICE INDUSTRY IN BRITISH GUIANA. 



In the course of an interview reported in the 

 Demerara A rijosy of April 6, Mr. T. E. Tinne, of the 

 firm of Sandbach, Parker and Co., made the following 

 reference to the rice industry : — • 



I have also been im[iressed by the enormous extension 

 of rice cultivation. In the not far distant future, we should 

 be able not only to raise all the rice required for our own 

 consumption, but io be exporters of rice to other countries. We 

 have got the front of Leonora — some 300 acres — planted in 

 rice. All the land we could spare we gave out to the coolies 

 to encourage them to settle on the property, and we are 

 finding the policy is sound. 



