Nov. I, 1886.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



309 



their machinery to suit the new staple until they 

 are relieved of "uncertainty as to supply. The French 

 ruanufacturers on the other hand will take as much 

 as they can get at about the price I have quoted, 

 and English and Irish manufacturers are ready to 

 follow their example as soon as a definite and regular 

 supply can be depended on. I have been personally 

 assured by some that they are prepared to enter into 

 contracts on a large scale, directly the supply can be 

 guaranteed. 



I do not, in the least, fear that Rhea coming to 

 this market a couple of years hence will fail to find 

 ready purchasers, because arrangements have already 

 been made to obtain supplies from China and else- 

 where, that will encourage the trade to expect regular 

 shipments, and the present uncertainty will at once 

 disappear, and as every one freely admits the valu- 

 able properties of the new staple, it will not belong 

 before Ehea will take an important position amongst 

 textile fabrics of British manufacture. 



NOTE ON RAISING EHEA FEOM SEED. 

 Bv Mh. J. W. MiNCHiN, OF Glenrock. 



We have been fairly successful with Rhea Seed 

 Nurseries, and have germinated and planted out seed- 

 lings from seed received from Paris and London and 

 also two varieties of seed from plants on our own 

 plantations. Generally speaking, the seed and seed- 

 lings must be treated in the same way as Cinchona 

 Ledgeriana seed. Tbe great difficultj' is to protect 

 the seed, which is exceedingly small, from ants. We 

 tried soaking the seed and watering the seed in 

 phenyle and in kerosine oil water, but found the best 

 course was to sow the seed in boxes or raised berls 

 supported on legs kept constantly tarred. We made 

 long basket beds of bamboo lattice-work, raised about 

 one foot from the ground on forked supports 5 feet 

 apart, with 6 inch sides to hold in the earth; the 

 earth was sifted as is usually done for Ledger nur- 

 series ; fresh jungle soil is suflicieut: each basket 

 bed was 3 feet wi le, and over each bed was erected 

 an ordinary sloping screen thatched sufficiently to 

 keep out rain. 



The beds should be made so that the slope of 

 the screen should face south anil west, which keeps 

 out the sun for the greater part of the day and even- 

 ing: before sowing the seed the earth in the basket 

 beds should be well damped through a fine rose 

 watering pot, the seed should be mixed with about 

 5 times its bulk of ashes, or fine sand, so that it may 

 be sown more evenly ; it can be sown rather thickly 

 as the seedlings can be pricked out when ^about an 

 inch high; after tbe seed is sown the beds should 

 be gently pressed with a flat board, no earth is re- 

 quired to be sprinkled over them ; they should be 

 lightly watered with a fine rose every evening. Care 

 should be taken to keep the supports fresh tarred, 

 and that no grasses or straws hang to the ground 

 by which ants, kc, could reach the seed beds. The 

 seed will begin to germinate in from to 10 days. 

 In from two to three months some of the seedlings 

 will be large enough to prick out, they will be about 

 an inch high above ground, and will have radish- 

 like roots, two to three inches long, they can then 

 be carefully taken up with small bamboo, chop sticks, 

 the seedlings being handled as little as possible, and 

 can be planted out into ordinary nursery beds about 

 4 inches apart, and should be protected from the sun 

 by bracken fern, stuck into the ground about them ; 

 in another three months they will be large enough 

 to plant into the field, and I have found that in 

 12 months from the time the seed is sown, the 

 plants will produce stems large enough for treatment. 

 The seed should be sown between October and March ; 

 during; the monsoon the seedlings are very liable to 

 damp from some fungus growth, as in Ledger seed- 

 lings, although I have no doubt, with care, they 

 can be grown at any season of the year; but I have 

 not yet succeeded with young seedlings subjected to 

 the early monsoon mists 



SUGAR AND " THE NEW SWEETNESS." " 

 In these dull and prosaic times the following 

 amusing article from the iVeekly Scotsnmn will, we 

 are sure, be read with some interest by Colonial 

 sugar planters :— Persons who are so fond of sweet 

 things that they have not the courage to practise 

 the self-denial of the Banting system have good 

 things in store for them. They have found a friend 

 in Orthobenzoyl-sulphonimide, the new discovery 

 of Dr. Constantine Fahlberg. Whether the makers 

 of cane and beet sugars will have as much reason 

 to be glad may be questioned, for in the near future 

 they will probably find their occupation gone. 

 What will become of the West Indies is, of course, 

 a serious matter. The ruin they have suffered by 

 the emancipation of slaves, and the ruin again 

 suffered by the abolition of the " differential duties " 

 about which Tom Dupuy waxes so savage in Mr. 

 Grant Allen's current story, " In All Shades," will 

 both be as child's play to the fate now in store 

 for the cane-sugar growers. Their only consolation 

 will be that the beet- sugar makers will share to 

 some extent, in the same fate : and, of course, if 

 there is one thing that sweetens one's own loss, 

 it is the knowledge that one's rival is being over- 

 whelmed in the same calamity. Dr. Fahl berg's 

 great discovery has recently been brought before our 

 scientific men in detail in Mr.Levenstein s paper before 

 one of the learned societies, and by Sir Henry 

 Roscoe before the Royal Institution, while incident- 

 ally it was mentioned by Professor Meldola in de- 

 scribing the progress of the coal-tar colour industry 

 before the Society of Arts three months ago. For 

 it is amongst the busy German workers amongst 

 coal tar products that the great modern discovery 

 is made, so that the country which has flooded us 

 and ruined our native sugar industries with cheap 

 sugar is to be hoist with its own petard, by making 

 a discovery which is not only to spell ruin to 

 Greenock and Bristol, but to render the cultivation 

 of beet as unnecessary and unprofitable as the sugar 

 cane seems likely soon to become. 



The story of the progress of the investigation of 

 coal-tar products is the scientific romance of our 

 day. Since the sickly and somewhat fugitive colour, 

 mauve, was discovered by Perkins thirty years ago, 

 investigation has been carried on with indefatigable 

 industry, till at the present moment the most 

 brilliant dyes— scarlets, blues, greens, and yellows — 

 can be drawn from the waste of our gasworks. 

 And now a further stage of discovery has been 

 made in the production of saccharine from the 

 same source. In sweetening power the new product 

 is stated to be '220 to 1 as compared with the best 

 cane sugar. We give the Philistine or popular 

 name to the new product rather than the appall- 

 ing chemical title already quoted. For it is wise 

 in those learned people to invent a simple as well 

 as a scientific name for their products. It would 

 be rather hard if our helpmeets at home had to 

 ask, " Do you take cream and Orthobenzoyl- 

 sulphonimide in your tea '?" This, it is true, is not 

 so formidable as some of the names in the new 

 industry. Thus, Professor Meldola assured his hearers 

 that " it appears flavenol is hydroxyphenyl-lepide," 

 and that when pure orthoamidoacetophenone is 

 treated in a certain way flavaniline is produced in 

 small quantities, and that flavaniline is amicophenyl- 

 lepidine. Truly, small quantities of such articles 

 should only be made when their pronunciation is 

 so difficult, and we may be glad that as sensible 

 a word as " Saccharin" has been adopted for 

 Dr. Fahlberg's popular invention. To an American 

 interviewer the successful chemist has laid bare the 

 entire process of extracting this new sugar, and 

 given illustrations of how it may be used to drive 

 other sugars out of use. It is not actually a sugar 



