542 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[January i, 1883. 



annual sugar crops of the whole world. If Mr. Mylne be 

 correct — and there appears to be every reason for thinking 

 that his estimate is within the mark — the annual yield 

 of sugar in the world is quite 10,000,000 tons, of which, 

 roughly, oue-teuth is consumed in this country. Of course 

 the one-half of this vast weight made in India is utterly 

 unsuited to the requirements of European nations without 

 refining, and even the refiners will not use Indian sugar 

 if they can help it, so badly is it made. Indeed, the 

 good sugar used in India itself is imported, and India, 

 except when prices are high, imports more sugar than 

 she exports. As she produces as much as the rest of 

 the world put together, this is a significant commentary 

 on the badness of her manufacture. There is much talk 

 of the gradual impoverishment of India, but if her sugar 

 manufactme could only be improved, a source of incalculable 

 wealth would be opened to the ryots. The cultivation is 

 not confined to the hiU districts, as the growth of tea, 

 coffee, and cinchona is, nor to special parts, like indigo 

 and silk, but can be pursued over the whole of the vast 

 peninsula. Labour in many parts is abundant, wages are 

 low — in some of the remoter parts, indeed, a working 

 man's income is £3 a year, taking the rupee at par ; coal 

 is found in some places ; there are many trunk lines of 

 railway ; and, since the opening of the Suez Oanal, transit 

 to Europe is cheap. India, in short, ought to supply the 

 world with sugar. ^What is wanting is proper [machinery, 

 even more than improved cultivation. The central factory 

 system, where the peasants sell the cane to establishments 

 worked with modern, appliances, appears to form the solution 

 of the question of how India is to become the most important 

 Sugar-exporting country. It is in such directions as these 

 that the true mission of England in India lies, and not in 

 barren and ephemeral warlike triumphs. The peace and 

 civilisation marked by the introduction of the indigo, silk, 

 tea, coffee, cinchona and other industries, as well as of 

 railways, steam power, and telegraphs, form the industrial 

 justification of our presence in India ; and our (jrovernmeut, 

 which has carefully fostered all these, has a far more 

 important task before it, if it can encourage the manufacture 

 of Sugar in a proper manner. Mr. Mylne states that if 

 the present weight produced of Indian sugar could only 

 be as well made as it is elsewhere, it would bring £8(5,000,000 

 a year into the pockets of the growers. But with proper 

 appliances the yield from the same area could be at least 

 trebled, so that it is an income of £250,000,000 a year 

 that the Indian ryots lose through imperfect means, know- 

 ledge, and appliances. — Produce Markets' Review. 



PARASITIC FUNGI. 

 It may be well said of the history of Parasitic Fungi 

 that the plot thickens. The more their history is studied 

 the more complicated does it appear to be. Their con- 

 struction is simple — of the simplest, in fact; but their 

 habits of life are astonishingly complex. In the some- 

 what inappropriately called higher plauts bud and seed 

 suffice, thr one for reproduction, the other for subdivision 

 and extension. The bud is a mere portion of the fabric, 

 more or less detached, and more or less independent, 

 told off to do a certain work. The seed likewise is a 

 detached portion of the pl.aut, with its allotted office. 

 The essential difference between the two is that while a 

 bud is i mere outgrowth from the branch which bears 

 it a seed requires for its development the concurrent 

 action of the male or pollen element with the germ or 

 female element. Bud and .seed then suffice in the so- 

 called higher plants for the reproduction and extension 

 of ihe plant. In the lower fungi buds and seeds, or their 

 physiological counterparts, do indeed exist, but now in 

 one form, now in another; in a third case in still another 

 guise, and so on. Before these facts were ascertained and 

 proven by actual experiment, each form was considered 

 as a separate species or as a representative of a genus 

 even. This opinion was only natural in the .state of know- 

 ledge at the time, the more so as one form often exists 

 or grows on one plant, anothei form on another plant of 

 totally different character. The interesting papers of Mr. 

 Plowright on the "Mildew ami Rust of Wheat," recently 

 published, afford good illu!}tration of this. Mere observation 

 of what occurs in the field was hardly likely, unless by 

 some extremely improbable chance, to enable the botanist 



to unravel the whole cminculum vita of the plant. It was 

 only when actual experiment was pressed into the service, 

 and when botanists began to cultivate these growths in 

 their laboratories under varying conditions, that the truth 

 became evident. By sowing the spores or reproductive 

 bocUes of the fungi under certain conditions accurately 

 determined, certain results were obtained. By altering the 

 conditions other results ensued. By excluding the spores 

 altogether no results at all were found. Such, in very 

 general terms, is the general character of the means adopted 

 by microscopists and botanists now-a-days. Mere observation 

 is not enough, cultivation and experiment are imperatively 

 necessary. By their means cumulative evidence is obtained. 

 The indirect and partial insight furnished by casual ob- 

 servation becomes converted into a connected chain of 

 direct evidence, which in proportion as it is free from 

 flaw and inaccuracy becomes unassailable. 



The necessary researches demand the knowledge, the 

 skm, the patience, the impartiality of a trained specialist, 

 and therefore they cannot be performed by every one. 

 The difficulties of the observations and the risk of fallacy 

 and misinterpretation are so great, that the observations 

 of one man require *o be checked and confirmed or refuted 

 as the case may be, by others. It is abundantly clear 

 that by no other means can we rightly obtain an insight 

 into the nature of these pests, every sympathy and 

 encouragement should therefore be held out to those who 

 devote themselves to the work. If we are to find a 

 preventative or a cme we are far more likely to do so 

 when we are familiar with the course of the malady than 

 when we are ignorant of its nature and procedure. ^^Jgnoti 

 viorhi nulla est curatio " has been an axiom of physicians 

 from time immemorial and that there is no cure for a 

 disease whose nature is unknown is as true as ever. 



But even where the nature and course of the disease 

 are, in a measure, made out, as in the ca.se of the leaf 

 disease of the Coffee and the Potato miu-rain, we seem 

 as far off as ever from a cure. This circumstance gives 

 occasion to some to sneer at the apparently unproductive 

 labours of the man of science. They forget that they 

 themselves have been growiug Coffee or Potatos, or what 

 not, all their lives, and have had the plants uuder constant 

 observation without advancing our knowledge one whit. 

 Instead of welcoming the information the specialist puts 

 before them, and endeavouring to turn it to account — 

 which, it should be remembered, is 'heir duty, not that 

 of the scientist — they carp at his labours, or, when too 

 well bred to do that, they indulge in a little banter at 

 his expense. Mr. Marshall Ward's researches into the 

 history and course of the Ceffee-leaf fungus, a summary 

 of which is given in the last number of the Journal of 

 the Linnean Society, prove incontestably that it is the fungus, 

 and nothing but the fungus, that produces the disease — they 

 prove the conditions under which the spores will germinate, 

 and those under which growth is impossible. They show 

 how and why it is the plant is so injured — how the fungus 

 not only interrupts the growth of the plant, but avails 

 itself of its food. "To replace the damage done,'' writes 

 Mr. "Ward, *'the leaves require to do more work in a 

 given time, or to have a longer lease of life to work in, 

 whereas they have less opportunity of doing either." The 

 same remarks, with the necessary modifications, apply to 

 the Potato fungus. Its history is not, thanks to Berkeley, 

 De Bary, Smith, Wilson, and others, the obscure thing 

 it once was, we know a great deal of its manifold 

 appearances, its spawn, its suckers, its bud-spores, its moving 

 spores, its male cell, its germ cell, and the resulting 

 " resting-spores." As if the resting-spore (the nearest 

 analogue to a seed) were not enough, De Bary tells us 

 of portions of the spawn which hibernate in the tissues 

 of the tuber, to start into life again when circumstances 

 are propitious. 



In our present issue Mr. Wilson describes similar masses 

 of spawn or mycelium ajygregated into hard lumps occupying 

 the tissues of the haulm and leaf, and which, as the 

 preparations he has kindly sent us show, first assume an 

 amoboid form and then give origin to threads bearing the 

 bud-spores or "conidia," as they are technically called. 

 This is an important observation of Mr. Wilson's, although 

 we cannot say that all the stages between what looks 

 like an amseba destitute of cell-wall and a spawn-thread 

 with its cellulo.se covering are as yet satisfactorily made 



