Vol. XVIII. No. 455. 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS, 



30!» 



tarlier fields ; but the returns will not be very good as the 

 crop suffered dming the dry weather. In other parts of 

 the island the condition is distressing , the plants are liarely 

 alive, ard making no progress. 'I'here is a great scarcity of 

 ground provisions, and the )am crop is doing very badly. 

 The rainfall for the month was 1 66 ioches ; for the year to 

 date 17 '67 inches. 



RUBBER SEED OIL. 



An intere.sting article o i Para rubber seed oil appears 

 in the Agricultural Bulletin of the Federated Malay States 

 for March and April 1919. 



With the present freight charges ($7 per bag of 130 ft.) 

 it would not .see*n profitable to ship rubber seed from the 

 Federated Maliy States to England for oil extraction. 

 Nevertheless the ml it.^elf brought J50 a ton in 19l!!i, and 

 the residual meal £8 a ton. The oil is stated to be inferior 

 to linseed oil for paint manufacture, but good enough to mix 

 with linseed oil for this iiurpose. The oil is no good for 

 aoap making. 



Machinery to deal with 1 ton of decorticated seed per 

 hour, including chemical extraction plant, but excluding 

 boiler and engine would cost at the present time about 

 £11,800 



Before su3h an investment could be profitable, consider- 

 able reduction in freight charges would be necessary ; also 

 a special use would have to be found for the oil. It is 

 suggested that rubber oil might prove nioro useful for paint 

 mixing in warm climates than linseed oil, which is said to 

 dry too quickly under hot conditions. 



The area under rubber cultivation in Malaya is, approxi- 

 mately, I i million acres, of which 1 million may be taken 

 as European-owned or managed estates. 



The yield of seed may be taken at aSout 400 per tree, 

 and assuming 90 trees per acre, the yield per acre would 

 amount to 306 ft. (1,000 seeds=8-5 ft.). 



This gives a total yield of 130,000 tons of seed per 

 an-nura, which, on a 20 per cent, oil basis, represents 26,000 



tons of oil. 



From an economic point of view it would be preferable 

 to express or extract decorticated seed. The quantity of 

 decorticated seed on the basis of 55 per cent, kernel, would 

 amount to 71,500 tons, which could be taken as yielding by 

 exprfssion 36 per cent, of oil, or as above, 26,000 tons, 

 approximately. 



Milk Adulteration Penalties.— Heavy penalties 



for milk adulteration have been enforce! recently in Trinidad. 

 According to the PortofSpain G^avtV/c, Rebecca Trotman, 

 an aged woman, was recently charged at the City Magistrate's 

 Court by Detective Corporal Hinds, functionary under the 

 Food and Drugs Ordinance, with selling milk adulterated 

 28 per cent, added water. 



Defendant pleaded guilty, and on being asked by His 

 Worship if she had anything to sny, said that the cow had a 

 calf and she placed wa'er into the milk to prevent the 

 mother ' going dry.' 



His VVorship after referring to the stupidity of that 

 •sort of superstition, fined defendant £14, and costs IOj-. 8(/.;in 

 default two months' imprisonment with hard labour. The 

 fine was paid. 



The same ofiicer prosecuted John Rawlins on September 

 18 for a similar offence. In this case milk had been adul- 

 terated with 19 per cent, water. His Worship fined defend- 

 ant £9 105. and costs 10.s. 'od- or two months' hard labour. 



The Moon and Crops —In the Experimtut Siv>ir,ie 

 Record h'v July 1911, p. 17, attention is given to the 

 continuation of experiments that were conducted at that 

 time in France, in order to find out if there is any truth in 

 the popular supposition that the moon exercises an influence- 

 on the growth of plants. In the la'e.st trials, planting at 

 the time of the new moon gave the greatest yield in twenty- 

 eight cases, planting in the first quarter in twenty-nine, 

 planting at the time of the full moon in twenty-eight, 

 and plMiiiiig in the last quarter in twenty-seven. This 

 show- DO material difference in the yield could be 



attribuL I .J the influence of the raoon. 



The Effect of Lightning on Hevea Rubber 



Trees. — It is well known that rubber trees are killed l>y 

 lightning in the tropics just as other trees are in northern 

 countries. Dr. Rutgers has given an account of other efiects 

 of lightning. In some cases it appears that trees may begin, 

 to die back at the tips of the branches, thus suggesting the 

 disease known by that name and due to a specific fungus. 

 In other cases the branches of trees may be only withered. 

 In some instances, strips of bark have been killed. He 

 further records that trees affected by lightning are very 

 liable to the attacks of borers, these evidently gaining an 

 entrance through damaged bark, even though the latter may 

 not be quite dead. Vertical lightning scars are also some- 

 times observed on trees which have been struck by lightning- 

 In one or two cases the outer bark of trees affected by 

 lightning has scaled ofT, this result being known on the East^ 

 Coast of Sumatra as 'Scurf; in such cases the trees are 

 not killed. (The India Rubber J<jur)ail, July 19, 1919 ) 



Shipping Coco-nut Oil in Bulk.— With 

 reference to the ditiiculty connected with the shipping of 

 coco-nut oil in bulk in tank steamers, due to the solidification 

 of the nil in cooler climates, and the recommendation contain- 

 ed in the paper entitled 'Copra and Coco nut Products,' pub- 

 lished in the Agricultural Bulletin (Fed-rated Malay 

 States, Vol. VI, No. 12, November and December 1918,) 

 that this difficulty could be overcome easily by the use of 

 steam coils in or around the tanks, the following information 

 received from Messrs. Harper k, Co., Kuala Lumpur, on 

 behalf of the Asiatic Petroleum Co., should be of interest. 

 The letter states : — 



'It will be of interest to your Department to learn that 

 regular shipments of coco-nut oil in bulk have been made 

 from Java to the Pacific Coast of America in the double 

 bottoms of cargo steamers. As stated in the article in the 

 Agricultural Bulletin, the difliculty of solidification in winter 

 can easily be overcome by fitting steam coils, the installation 

 of which, in double hcitonn, presents no difficulty.' 



One of the greatest difficulties in connexion with the 

 export of the oil is therefore easily overcome. (From the 

 Agricultural Bulletin of the Federated Malay States for 

 March and April 1919.) 



Weather statistics [jublished in the Leeward Islands 

 Ga-.etfe, for August 21, 1919, show that the mean maximmi 

 temperature at Antigua Botanic Hardens during the middle 

 of August was 8.i' F., at St Kitts it was 86° F. ; at the 

 Botanic Station, Montserrat however, the mean maxim'in 

 temperature was 92° F. This is not in accordance with the 

 generally recognized idea that Montserrat is the moK'ii .<f 

 the Leeward Islands. 



