112 



hHE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[AUGU6T I, 1884. 



pectation of the superintendent to get at least GOO lb. 

 of made tea per acre this year. 



We have been very kindly favored by Mr. J. H. 

 Barber of Blackstone estate with the following letter 

 addressed to him by his Colombo agents, Messrs. 

 Baker & Hall :— 



Polwatte Mills, June 30th, 1884. 

 J. H. Barber, Esq., Blackstone. 



Dear Sir, — We beg to send the following extract lrom 

 our London Agents' letter which may prove useful to 

 you: — 



" We, notice, that whatever the gross weight, the tea is 

 always the same ; thus, packages weighing gross 83 lb. nett 

 60 lb. and gross 63 lb. nett 40 lb. and the dock charges eome 

 out "90d en the larger aud 105d on the smaller. If the 

 smaller packages had the tare reduced 4 lb. then the dock 

 charges would be also somewhat reduced viz., to 95d per lb. 



" The weight of your packages gross should run as nearly as 

 possible to 59 lb., 79 lb., 129 lb., for the rates respectively for 

 these weights are 3s 2jd, 3s 6d and 4s Cd. 



" Thus a package weigning gross 79 lb. pays 3s 6d dock 

 charges aud one weighing SO lb, pays 4s 6d, the extra 1 lb gross 

 making Is per package difference. 



" These figures may possible interest some of your friends 

 and we thiuk will show that in their interests the gross 

 weights should run as near to 126 lb. as possibly but not exceed 

 that figure. 



" To give another instance, take one half-chest weighing 

 gross S3 lb. and netting 60 lb. at 4s 6d per half-chest, the 

 dock charges work outper lb. of tea 54-60ths d, a chest weigh- 

 ing 126 lb. gross and netting say 100 lb. at 4s 6d per package 

 would only pay 54-100ths d per lb. of tea making a difference 

 of 4s per package." 



We trust you may be able to act on these suggestions, as 

 anything which tends to reduce the present heavy charges in 

 Ceylon tea as compared with China aud India teas is a point 

 gained against our chief opponents. — We are, dear sir, yours 

 faithfully, Baker & Hall. 



As a conclusion for today of these remarks upon 

 tea, we gladly give our opinion of the trial that 

 took place this afternoon at Messrs. J. Walker & 

 Co.'s Works of Messrs. W. & J. Jackson's Manual 

 or Hand-power Tea-roller. Some very good leaf (but 

 hardly enough withered) from Carolina estate was 

 manipulated. The box of the machine easily held 

 its charge of 20 1b. and with four coolies working 

 the cranks the leaf was well-rolled in 22 minutes 

 in spite of a delay of 3 or 4 minutes to tighten up 

 a screw. Not much description is needed of the 

 machiue for it is exactly on the same principle as 

 Messrs. Jackson's larger ones, which are so well 

 known, the box and table which work against fach 

 other being on good stout legs, and being set in 

 motion by a cooly at each of the four handlts at- 

 tached to the machine. The motion seemed so easy 

 that we think 6 coolies working in relays could well 

 manage a ten hours' spell of work. Mr. Lamont 

 mentioned that he was going to enlarge the box by 

 an inch. In that case we think the output — counting 

 three rills per 60 minutes — would be 100 lb. green leaf 

 per hour, or say 1,000 lb. per day. The comparison 

 then would stand thus : — 

 Boiling by hand, 1,0001b. green leaf, takes coolies 25 



Do. by hand-roller, 1,000 lb. green leaf takes coolies 6 



making a saving of ... ... coolies 19 



or of K6 - 27 per 250 lb. made tea per day, besides se- 

 curing a more even out-turn. The only objection to the 

 machine is what appears to us the very high price 

 aBked for it, K375 : but even at this figure it would 

 repay itself in three or four months. 



NOTES ON " KAPOK." 



In giving the translated Circular below relating to 

 the ' ' Kapok " industry we beg to remind our readers 

 of the correspondence respecting it which took place 

 at. the time of the Melbourne Exhibition. Indeed it 



was in consequence of the information which th 

 Ceylon Commissicner then gave to the Austr. lia 

 merchants that the trade in it from Calcutta an 

 Ceylon, noticed in the extract, sprang up. He f( und 

 that coir was being largely superseded for stuffing 

 purposes by an article from Java called "kapok," 

 and on requf sling to be shown this product was 

 amused to find it nothing other than what is known 

 in Ceylon as the silk or tree cotton, which, as we have al- 

 ready said, he so favorably brought to the notice of the 

 Australian public as to cause an appreciable scarcity 

 of the commodity in the Colombo market ! Mr. W. 

 Ferguson pointed out at the time that the cotton of the 

 red-flnweied variety (Bombax malabancum ; Sinhalese 

 kalu-imbul-yaha), a tree he believed to be indigenous 

 to Ceylon, was scant, compared to that of the silk-cotton 

 tree (Eriodendron anjractuosttm ; Siuha'ese pulun- 

 imbulrjaha) which he believed to be not indigenous 

 to our island, but intioduced from the West Indies. 

 It is interesting to learn from the Gardener's Diction- 

 ary that crion means wool ; dendron, a tree ; and 

 anfracluosvm, winding. 



The trade in this commodity is rapidly increasing, 

 having been largely introduced into Holland, Belgium 

 and Germany. In the last-named country, we believe, 

 it is employed in the manufacture of gun-cotton. The 

 matter we give below is from a circular sent to 

 us by the firm of J. C. Kliitgen of Hotter- 

 dam, and which we have had translated, as the 

 ubject matter is one which is likely to prove 

 profitable to us in Ceylon. We notice from the 

 papers before ub that among the qualities attrib- 

 uted to kapok is the veiy important one of 

 insusceptibility to moths. \\ ith regard to the 

 concluding paragraph of our extract, we may say 

 that while acknowledging the shortness of the staple, 

 we do not doubt that this objection to spinning it 

 will be overcome either by the invention of Fpeeial 

 machinery, or by uniting it with a longer stapled 

 article. What is ssid of packing the kapok dry is one 

 of those things that ought " to go without saying." A 

 difficulty connected wilh the importation of this cotton 

 into Holland, namely its great bulk has been over- 

 come by the constiuction of a kapok press. The 

 seeds we know yield a good oil, and cotton-cake as 

 a food for catfle is commonly u;ed in Ceylon. 



In Java, the trees are pressed into the service of 

 Government by having the telegraph wires affixed to 

 them, and a correspondent wrote to ub some time ago 

 from Bantam to say that the kapok was the best tree 

 to grow pepper upon. 



With regard to the profitableness of the cultivation 

 we see it stated that the returns of a bouw (some- 

 what over 2 acres) of land is about 400 florins (or 

 rupees). This would be at the rate of say £15 per 

 acre, a very handsome return as matters go now-a- 



( Translated from the Dutch for the "Ceylon Observer." ) 

 KAPOK. 

 (Eriodendron anfractuosum. J 

 The article kapok, at present an article of com- 

 merce, ccmes for the most part from Netherlands East 

 India. During the last few years, the export to this 

 country has become of importance, as will appear from 

 the following statistics : — 



Per§ kilo. Per J kilo. 

 1877 — 14,093 bales, average price 



of uncleaned 15c, of cleaned 36c. 

 1878—10,519 „ „ He „ 35c. 



1879—12,050 „ „ „ 15c „ 42c. 



1880— 6,479 „ „ „ 16c „ 45c. 



1881— 9,991 „ „ „ 17c „ 45c. 

 1882—28,032 „ „ „ lie „ 40c. 

 In our country the demand is extending greatly, 



and in Germany and Belgium also the consumption 



