May I, 1884.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



811 



The Busy Bee. — The honey-bee has long been a type of 

 the industrious worker ; but there are few people who know 

 how much labor the sweet hoard of the iiive represents. 

 Bach head of clover contains about sixty distinct tlower- 

 tubes, each of which contains a portion of sugar nob ex- 

 ceeding the fire-hundredth part of a grain. Some apiarian 

 enthusiast who has watched their movements concludes 

 that the proboscis of the bee must therefore be inserted 

 into five hundred clover-tubes before one grain of sugar 

 can be obtained. There are seven thou.sand grains in a 

 pound ; and, as honey contains three-fourths of its weight 

 of dry sugar, each pound of honey represents to and a half 

 million clover-buds sucked by bees. — rojndar Sciettce yews. 



How TO Use Hen- JI.vxure? — This question comes from 

 several subscribers. The condition of the manure differs 

 with the management of the poidtry house. If the house 

 is swept daily, and the space under the roosts is covered 

 with earth to receive the droppings, no preparation will 

 be needed. If, as usual, the manure is allowed to accu- 

 mulate, and oiJy occasionally removed, it comes out in 

 solid masses or lumps. The lumps must be broken up by 

 a pounder, and the manure sifted and mixed with dry peat, 

 or dry woods-earth, or in the absence of these, dry soil 

 may be used. Mixed one part to ten of muck, etc., it willbe 

 useful upon farm and garden crops. — American Ji/ricuUurist. 



ToNQUiN Beax. — In a report from Mr. Consul Mansfield, 

 of Caracas, on the mining districts of Venezuela, he states 

 that the Dipterix oilorata, which j-ields the fragrant seed 

 commonly known as the tonquin bean, aliouuds in the forests 

 of the Caracas district, where the trees grow to a consider- 

 able size. The first crop of " beans " is yielded in the third 

 year of the plan 1, the fruit bearing some resemblance to a 

 small mango, and containing in its centre the ** bean," which 

 emits a powerful odour. A full crop is not yielded until 

 two years later. The tree is said to grow in any climate in 

 Venezuela, but to attain a greater perfection in warm tem- 

 perate zones, aUke removed from parching heat or the sharp 

 mountain breezes. Last year's crop was a large one; Vene- 

 zuela alone exporting five thousand quintals at an average 

 price of 3^ francs per pound. It is estimated that the bean 

 is used for curing and flavouring eight million quintals annu- 

 ally of tobacco exported from the United States. The van- 

 illa also grows wild in many of the f ore.sts of Guayana. It 

 may be remembered that a sample of Guayana vanilla was 

 mentioned as having been .shown at the Vienna exhibition 

 last year. — Pltaniiaceutical Journal. 



Artificial Evolution. — The London Garden says : "Every 

 day brings before us some fresh evidence, same new develop- 

 ment, of hybridism ii. the garden. Specie.s-making is going 

 on in our gardens as well as in nature, and so abundantly are 

 hybrids appearing, that ' evolution made easy ' would seem 

 to be an appropriate motto for the hybridists of our own 

 time. Hybridism as a means of evolving new phases of plant- 

 beauty, new fruits, new food-plants, will remain to us or 

 to posterity when every square mile of the world shall have 

 bfeen ransacked, and when new natural species shall have 

 become old, or no more. Hybridism will then be the 

 kaleidoscope through which all new and varied plant-beauty 

 will appear. And not beauty alone ; for by its magic agency, 

 as taught us in Nature's own hornbook, old plants will be 

 made more fit for new uses, old favorites of to-day become 

 the new ones of to-morrow, and so will they serve the varied 

 purposes and the unthought-of fashions of all time to come. 

 Apart from present uses and practical appliances, hybridism 

 and grafting in the garden will enable the biologist to 

 verify or prove many, if not all, of his observations ; in a 

 word, apart from the present gain to our gardens, hybrid- 

 ism and cross-breeding will rank far higher in the botany of 

 the future than they have already done in that of the past." 

 Afhican Woods.' — It is not too much to expect that one 

 of the results of the forthcoming Forestry Exhibition at 

 Edinburgh may be the development of the timber resources 

 of some of our colonies. The subject is one of very wide 

 interest, and there is room at the present time for an ex- 

 tension, not only in iiuantity but also in variety of our 

 timber and ornamental wood supplies. Many apparently 

 excellent woods are brought home by different travellers 

 from time to time from various parts of the African con- 

 tinent, but their botanical sources are, for the most part, 

 unknown, and they never come into actual use. The prin- 

 cipal African wood indeed of acknowledged value at the 

 present time, is the so-called African Oak or Teak (Old- 



fieldia africana), which Is so useful for piles for wharve,s 

 &c. This, however, is an example of a durable wood, useful 

 for structural purposes, but not of an ornamental char- 

 acter. An example of a ^Vest African wood, both durable 

 and ornamental, has. recently been presented to the Kew 

 Museum by Capt. Molony,C.M.G. ; it is furnished by Chloro- 

 phora excelsa, Bth. and Hook, f., a tree belonging to the 

 Morere section of Urticaceaj, gi'owing at Yoruba, Upper 

 Guinea, where it is known under the names of Eoko, or 

 Iroko wood. Notwithstanding its ornamental character, 

 which, when polished, exhibits a combination of Satin and 

 wavy Maple woods, it is noted for its great strength and 

 duKibility for building purposes, as it resists the attacks 

 of white ants — a great recommendation to anv wood required 

 for use in tropical countries. — Gardeners' Chronicle. 



Climate. — The following extracts, taken from the report 

 of the Botanic Garden, Trinidad, will be _ of interest to 

 cultivators as showing the comparative uniformity of con- 

 ditions and the slight range vmder which tropical plants 

 grow. The mean maximum temperature for the three years, 

 1880—1882, was 90 = , the range being from m ° in Janu- 

 ary 1880, to 92 ° in April 18S1. For the same period the 

 mean minimum temperature was 61 ==.7, the range being 

 from 60 0.7 in February 1880 to 68 = .4 in April, May 

 1881, and in September 18S0. The extreme range between 

 maximum and minimum for the three years was 38 ° .3 F. 

 The mean temperature for twenty-one years is given as 

 77 ° .7, the highest being 70 ° .5 in May, the lowest 76 ° 

 in .Tanuarv and February. The maximum humidity for 

 twenty-one years is registered as ■.S8.'i in August 1880; the 

 mininuim in April 1860 as ■572—1,000 representing satur- 

 ation. The average amount of rainfall for twenty years 

 is 65-85 inches, the maximum being 8.52, the minimum 44. 

 The average amount of cloudiness (ranging from total 

 clearness, to 10 total cloudiness), is given at .5-2 for the 

 whole year, the range being from 45 .as a monthly mean 

 minimum in January to 64 in October. Where, as in 

 countries like Trinidad, the range is so small, records of 

 mean temperature are valuable, but for climates where 

 the conditions are more variable and the extremes wide 

 apart mean temperatures are misleading. A ready method 

 of recording the relative duration of any given temper- 

 ature or other meteorological phenomenon is still a desi- 

 deratum. — Gardetiers' Chronicle. 



The Peach-Teee Bokee.— The Borer is a wide-spread and 

 destructive pest in the peach orchard. The mature insect is 

 a moth, which appears from the middle of .July to the last oE 

 August. The female deposits her eggs singly on the bark of 

 the tree, near the surface of the soil. The young borers work 

 downward into the roots, forming small winding channels. A 

 full-grown borer is half an inch long, and is soft, pale 

 yellow, and with strong black jaws. The borers make 

 leathery cocoons out of castings or " sawdust," gum and 

 silk, in which they remain in the inactive or pupa state, 

 near the surface of the soil. If the earth is loose, the co- 

 coons may be an inch or more below the surface. There are 

 several remedies, and more preventive measures for this pest. 

 The presence of the borrr Is known by the dust and exud- 

 ation of gum. and when these are found, the burrow should 

 be probed with a .slip of whalebone, or a short wire, and the 

 borer killed. Hot water is sometimes used, the earth around 

 the base of the tree having been removed. The knife and 

 probe used in late autumn or early spring, are the most effect- 

 ive means of reaching and Killing the borer. Care should 

 be taken not to cut the tree more than necessary. ^ Among 

 preventive measures, is the banking of the tree with earth 

 for a foot or so. This mound with the earth firmly pressed 

 around the tree, may be permanent, or better still, thrown 

 up in spring, and leveled in autumn, after the season of 

 egg-laying is passed. Ashes and cinders are sometimes 

 heaped around the trees instead of mounds of earth. A 

 covering of stout paper, a plastering of clay, or a wash of 

 tobacco water may help to keep the egg-laying moth away 

 from the trunk of the tree during the summer.— .4 )««■««)! 

 Agricultnri^^t. 



WELLS' "ROUGH ON CORNS." 



iVsk for Wells' "Eough on Corns." Quick relief^com- 

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 Madon & Co., Bombay, General Agents. 



B. S. 



