270 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[Oct. I, 1886. 



ARTiiiciAr/ Diamonds. — A correspondent of Invcntioas 

 (Mr. J- Palmf'r) staces that he obtains crj'stallised carbon 

 in the following manner : — Carbonic acid gas is liquefied 

 by pressure in a strong wrought-iron cylinder, which 

 has an insulated carbon rod fixed at each side of the 

 lower end. The end of each carbon rod projects into 

 the vessel about an inch. A current of electricity 

 (about E.M.F. 30 volts and 15 amperes) is then passed 

 through tlie liquid gas, by means of the ends of the 

 carbon rods, outside the cylinder, being connected to 

 an electric battery. Electrolytic action then takes place 

 on the liquid gas, and pure crystals of carbon are gradu- 

 ally deposited on the carbon points. What becomes 

 of the liberated oxygen, the iron vessel, and the operator 

 is not staled.— C/«fj«is< aiid Drugf/ist. 



OoiOA Drvini; &c. in Matai.e. — What has become 

 of those perfections of drying apparatus— the American 

 evaporators y Is cocoa still stewed and desiccated in 

 these machines? I bear that on one large estate a 

 tea drier is being '.itilized as a cocoa-drier also. The 

 drying of cocoa artificially is not by .iny means 

 simple affair. I have seen a small room economically 

 arranged with stove and fan turn out very eftioacious 

 and a more ambitious scheme of Clerihew (with no 

 limit of care and thought and expenditure) yet turn 

 out a failure. There is no doubt but that cocoa 

 suffered terribly from the drought of 1883-84, and 

 that even old ' trees in the open were not able to 

 recover for a long time. The bark seemed black 

 and "bound." I may mention an experiment made 

 upon trees to effect some relief to this. They were 

 cut as deep as was safe (the bark merely) along the 

 older branches, but chiefly on the stems, straight 

 down, in four lines so as to allow the tree to expand 

 more freely. They all appeared to derive much advan- 

 tage from this, and there is one tree at the Pera- 

 deniya Gardens which was so treated that it is literally 

 crowded with fruit upon all its branches, as if the 

 cutting had somehow made the sap fly to the branches 

 in superabundance. — Local " Times. " 



Agricoltuue in the BonTHEEN Province OK Ceylon. 



Mr. Wm. Jansz, the retired head clerk of the Batti- 



caloa Kacheheri, who has had 15 years' experience of 

 Agricultural operations in the Eastern Province, has 

 indented fot a supply of seed paddy from Batticaloa 

 with the objec of introducing it into the Galle dis- 

 trict. He is so convinced that before a good crop can 

 be got, the seed must be brought from some distant 

 place (which it appears the Sinhalese cultivator does not 

 recognise), that he is desirous of experimentino with 

 the Batticaloa seed paddy. The field selected is at 

 Gauegama in the Gangaboda Pattu, and three kinds 

 of seed, maturing in three, four and six months will 

 be used. We trust that Mr. Jansz's efi:'orts on behalf 

 of the agriculturists of the South will meet with all the 

 success which such a public-spirited attempt deserves. 

 According to Mr. Green (Agricultural Primer) " the 

 Sinhalese cultivator recognises this principle of rotation 

 without knowing it when he tries one kind of paddy 

 seed for one crop, and another kind for the next crop." 

 In case the present scheme result satisfactorily, we shall 

 be curious to know if the native cultivators will adopt 

 the experiment. Mr .Jansz's opinion is shared by an 

 experienced European planter, who states that the 

 present meagre yield can be (juadrupled by employing 

 imported seed. 



The " FURIOUS " Ceylon Cinchona Pl.^nters. 



Such is the way in which the Chrmist and 



Drutiqixt in reviewing proceedings of the Pharma- 

 ceutical Conference refers to our cinchona cultiv- 

 ators. An interesting reference is also made to the 

 Nilgiri Gardens and to the scientific work going 

 on there :— 



Last year Mr. David Hooper gave good indication 

 in a paper read at Aberdeen that there is good stuH' 

 in him, and that he is a worthy succesnor of Pirough- 

 ton. The importance of the Government cinchona 

 plantations has, from a commercial point of view, 

 diminished considerably since Ceylon planter.s have 

 gone in for cinchona so furiously; but for that 

 very reason the Government venture lias increased 

 in scientific importance. The work of a quinolo- 



gist in a cinchona plantation is in the highest 

 degree interesting, and of great practical value to 

 the cultivator, since it reveals the effect on the bark 

 of the various artificial means which are adopted to* 

 improve the drug in quantity and quality. Na- 

 turally, such a paper as Mr, Hooper's may be little 

 discussed, but that is no reason why it should not 

 get a good place in the programme. 



Cinchona and Tea in .Tava. — FrQm trans- 

 lations in Straits Times received today we learn : — 

 " The Planters' Association at Sukabumie in Java 

 has taken steps to test a newly invented process 

 found out by Dr. Eydman for cheaply extracting 

 medicinal alkaloids from cinchona barks. Should 

 the experiments result satisfactorily, a problem 

 of the utmost weight to cinchona planters in that 

 island will be solved. Dr. Eydman is fully con- 

 fident and sure of success so that there is every 

 prospect of arriving at a solution favourable to 

 the interests of cinchona growers there. Another 

 welcome bit of news to them is the assurance on 

 good authority that, in Ceylon, the export of cin- 

 chona bark has reached its utmost limits, attended 

 by a heavy increase in that of root bark, one con- 

 signment of which was secured by digging up about 

 tifty thousand trees. Bark exports show such evid- 

 ent signs of approaching decrease that one out of 

 three agents of European firms buying up that 

 article at Colombo is said to have made up his 

 mind to settle down in Java. His coming thither 

 is only deferred until that island produces cinchona 

 bark enough to admit of his establishing himself 

 permanently there. — Tea growing in Java as pointed 

 out by an expert in the Bode has a bright future 

 before it. Yet capitalists, for some reason or other, 

 shrink from embarking money in this line of busi- 

 ness. As matters now stand, of all the kinds of 

 cultivation carried on in Java, that of tea is cert- 

 ainly by far the most remunerative. Should season- 

 able rains continue to fall, the dividends of many 

 tea companies will assuredly prove this at the end 

 of the year." 



Water Purification. — At a recent meeting of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers, the paper read was on 

 " Water Purification : Its Biological and Chemical Basis," 

 by Percy F. Frankland, Ph. D., B. s. c, F. c. s. The 

 earlier t attempts to purify water dealt .simply with the 

 removal of visible suspended particles ; but later che- 

 mists turned their attention to the matters present 

 in solution in water. Since the advance of the germ 

 theory of disease, and the known fact that Hving organ- 

 isms were the cause of some, and probably of all, zymotic 

 diseases, the demand for a test which should recog- 

 inze the absence or presence of micro-organisms in 

 water had become imperative. It was, however, only 

 during the last few years that any such test had been 

 set forth, and this was owing to Dr. Koch, of Berlin. 

 By this means the only great step which had been 

 made since the last Rivers Pollution Commission had 

 been achieved. It had been supposed that mo.st filter- 

 ing materials oft'ered little or no harries to micro-or- 

 ganisms ; but it was now known that many substances 

 had this power to a greater or less degree. It had also 

 been found that, in order to continue their efficiency, 

 frequent renewal of the filtering material was necessary. 

 Vegetable carbon employed in the form of charcoal 

 or coke was found to occupy a high place as a bio- 

 logical filter, although previously, owing to its chemical 

 inactivity, it had been disregarded. Being .in inexpens- 

 ive material, and easily renewed, it was destined to 

 be of great seivice in the purification of water. Ex- 

 periments were also made by the agitation of water 

 with solid particles. It was found that very porous 

 substances like coke, animal and ve^etchhi charcoal, 

 were highly otUoient in removing organized )nitter from 

 ivater when tlie latter came in contact with them in this 

 manner. Also, it was found that the well-known pre- 

 cipitation process, introduced by Dr. Clark, for soften- 

 ing water with lime, had a most marked effect in re- 

 moving micro-orgaaisQjs from water. — Indian Etu/ineer, 



