Vol. XV. No. 368. 



THE AGRICULTUEAL NEWS. 



191 



VETERINARY WORK IN INDIA. 



Considerable progress has recently been made by the 

 Provincial Veterinary Departments of India in educating the 

 people to believe in the scientific treatment of animal diseases. 

 The numbers of cases treated in hospitals and dispensaries, 

 and by officers on tour, are steadily increasing, and in one 

 province, the Punjab, many private individuals have come 

 forward to establish veterinary hospitals at their own expense, 

 ■while in the Central Provinces some of the cattle-owners 

 voluntarily deposited the cost of 500 doses of anti-rinderpest 

 serum. At first there was strong prejudice against itiocula- 

 tion, but, according to the Report on the Progress of Agricul- 

 ture in India for 1913-14, cattle-owners are beginning to 

 look upon it with great favour, and consider it the only 

 satisfactory measure to be adopted against rinderpest. 

 Striking instances of the efficacy of the anti-rinderpest serum 

 were demonstrated at Gaisabad and Chanda in the Central 

 Provinces, where 7,233 cattle were inoculated with no 

 ■mortality amongst them. 



In some of the provinces rinderpest was more widespread 

 than in previous years, ard there would have been a great 

 -increase in the number of animals inoculated but for an 

 unfortunate break-down in the supply of .serum from 

 Muktesar. Large orders for the serum were received from 

 Egypt, the Sudan, and Rhodesia, which had to be set aside; 

 but new centrifuges have been installed at the Imperial 

 Bacteriological Laboratory at Muktesar, and a branch 

 laboratory at Bareilly is being expanded, by which it is hoped 

 that it will be possible to meet the growing demand for 

 serum. 



Special endeavours have been made to improve the sheep 

 industry in the Punjab. Breeding experiments, undertaken 

 in the United Provinces with a view to ascertain how far the 

 fleece of the indigenous sheep can be improved, have so far 

 yielded satisfactory results. The introduction of a merino 

 cross has produced a very beneficial effect on both the quality 

 and quantity of the fleece. Similar experiments have also 

 been conducted at Pusa. {Journal of the Royal Society of 

 Arts.) 



A New Chemical Hygrometer —The following 



■description of a new method of determining the relative 



humidity of the air is summarized in the Monthly Bulletin 



of Agvicuhiiral Intelligence and Plant Diseases from an 



■article in The Analyst, Vol. XL, No. -167, London, February 



191-5, from which further information may be obtained. 



'The method of measuring the relative humidity of the 

 air by the wet and dry bulb thermometers is liable to give 

 inaccurate results under certain conditions, and for this 

 reason investigations have been led to the subject of chemical 

 hygrometry. The present paper describes a simple apparatus 

 "for determining the moisture content of the air by volume 

 •measurements before and after contact with sulphuric acid, 

 ■which completely absorbs all water vapour present in one 

 •contact; the manipulation is ea.sy, and less than two minutes 

 lis sufficient to obtain a reading. In a series of trials 

 carried out over a period of several months, the hygrometer 

 ■worked most satisfactorily and gave results in very good 

 -agreement with those obtained by gravimetric determinations, 

 and by the use of Regnaults's dew-point apparatus, while 

 vreadings taken simultaneously with wet and dry bulb 

 • thermometers sometimes showed wide discrepancies.' 



WEST INDIAN PRODUCTS. 



DRUGS AND SPICES ON THE LONDON 



MARKETS. 



Mr. J. R. Jackson, A.L.S., has forwarded the follow- 

 ing report on the London drug and spice market* 

 for the month of March: — 



The produce markets during April have been, as is always 

 the case at this period of the year, more or less disturbed by 

 the new Budget proposals, which, taken together with the 

 frequent prohibition or limitation of certain imports or ex- 

 ports by the Board of Trade, give an unsettled state to articles, 

 containing spirit or sugar such, for instance, as tamarinds. 

 The general tendency, however, with products that come under 

 our special notice has been that of increased demand at 

 advanced rates, as the following details will show, 



GINGER, NUTMEGS, MACE AND PIMENTO. 



There has been but a slow demand for ginger through- 

 out the month, in the early part of which Sierra Leone was 

 quoted at 44.<. per cwt. At auction on the 19th, nutmegs 

 were in fair demand at the following rates: 72"s Is. id., lOO's 

 Is. to Is Irf., and 112's lOid. At the same auction, mace 

 was also in good demand at is. 8(7. to 2s. \d. per lb. (.^uite 

 at the end of the month large quantities of pimento were 

 reported to have arrived, and sales effected at Z\d. per B). 



•SAESAPAEILLA. 



At the drug auction on the 6th of the month, very 

 limited quantities of sarsaparilla were offered, as follows: 

 Lima 26 bales, 9 of which sold at Is. Id. to Is Sd. per Bt>. 

 for ordinary part coarse: 1 bale only of native .Jamaica 

 was offered and sold at Is. id. per lb. for fair red: 10 

 bales of Mexican were also offered, but found no buyers- 

 grey .Jamaica was entirely absent. 



KOLA, LIME .JUICE, LIME OIL, CASSIA FISTULA, CITRIC ACID 

 TAMARINDS, AND CASHE^W NUTS. 



At the first auction on the 6th of the month, kola was 

 in good supply with 93 packages. Of the.se, 6 bags of 

 good bright West Indian halves realized from 4 Jf/. to 5ir/. 

 per R. Altogether 35 packages were dispose.! of. At the 

 same sale, 16 hogsheads of brown St. I^ucia lime juice 

 were offered, but none was di.sposed of, being limited at 

 3s. per gallon, which price was maintained at the 

 end of the month. In the middle of the month, West 

 Indian distilled lime oil was firm at 9s , and hand pressed 

 at 10s. Some 50 packages of Cassia Fistula were offered 

 at auction on the 6th of the month but found no 

 buyers, being held at 60s. per cwt. Citric acid has beea 

 advancing rapidly since our last report, rising to 3«. IQd. ab 

 the beginning of the month, and closing at 4s. per H). East 

 Indian tamarinds were in good supply at the first auction on 

 the 6th of the month, 53 casks being brought forward: 30s. 

 was the price asked, but none was sold. At the first auction 

 also, cashew nuts were in abundant supply, some 355 packa»ei 

 being offered, but none sold. 



