August i, 1SS4.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



97 



REPAIRING THE CLIMATE. 



By telegraph from Melbourne we learn that the Agricult- 

 ural Department intend to plant with trees 3000 acres in 

 the You Yangs district, which has suffered much from 

 drought since the original timber was destroyed. Baron von 

 Mueller has reported as to the powers of the Eucalyptus 

 trees to absorb water, and to condense into water the moist- 

 ure contained in the air ; he looks upon judicious planting 

 as a help in maintaining and augmenting water supply. 

 Whether the Baron's theory is correct or not, the planting of 

 these trees is a step in the direction which in this colony 

 must be followed sooner or later. Nobody can doubt the 

 absorbent powers of large flooded gums, as they are common- 

 ly called, and the power of trees as rain producers has been 

 repeatedly discussed; but it is unfortunate that, while one 

 set of theorists announce their belief that forests do with 

 certainty increase the rainfall, there are others who tell us 

 they can find no proof, hi the experiments they have tried, 

 that this effect will follow the re-planting of forests in 

 country that has been denuded of timber, nor can they say 

 with certainty that the rainfall decreases when natural for- 

 ests are destroyed. Speaking unscientifically, the experience 

 of Australia of late gives little support to the Baron's 

 theory, for plains and forests have been equally subject to 

 the want of rain ; and there have been some strips of country 

 where showers have fallen often enough to prevent loss of 

 stock which appear exactly similar in the matter of veget- 

 ation to the dry strips beside them. The eucalyptus is a 

 great absorber of water, and on that account is invaluable 

 for planting wh re the land is marshy; and it gives off 

 its moisture into the air also, but when this is carried 

 straight off by wind into the parched interior it can be of 

 little local use as an augmenter of the supply. Had we a 

 high mountain range against which the clouds would be 

 compressed by the wind, rain would be more certain ; but 

 the luxuriant growth of trees is only a proof that they receive 

 sufficient moisture, not that they produce it. — Queenslander. 



WINTER IN THE TROPICS. 



It seems to be hardly realised how wintry is the aspect 

 of the dry season in the Tropics. Many more of the trees 

 in Africa are deciduous than we often imagine in our con- 

 jured-up mental visions of a fair tropic land, where per- 

 petual verdure reigns, and the vegetation is a vague, in- 

 definite mixture of limp Palms, with fronds like' ostrich 

 feathers, and rampant Bananas raising their florid greenery 

 above the masses of formless creepers; but, nevertheless, 

 when about a month has elapsed after the last rains are 

 over, the aspect of an African hillside has much of the 

 cheerless desolation of winter about it. The once impos- 

 ing Baobabs, whose masses of verdure were fair to see, 

 are reduced to mazes of leafless twigs; the ground is cov- 

 ered with a brown carpet of fallen leaves ; many trees, 

 though retaining their foliage, put forth no fresh shoots, 

 and are yellow and seared with the hot sun ; here and 

 there an evergreen stands out, like an English Yew or 

 Holly, in almost heartless contrast of dark cold green, 

 amid its faded withered fellows, and next to it, perhaps, 

 is a white skeleton of what was a short time since a 

 tufted tree. The tall herbs, erewhile gay with gorgeous 

 flowers, show now nothing but yellow stalks and shrivelled 

 seed-vessels, in which perhaps there still lurks a point of 

 colour in the red or orange seeds that gleam from under 

 , the brown husk. The many tiny flowerets, the mosses and 

 fungi, are scarce to find; only certain repulsive plants — 

 things with fleshy, mutilated limbs, weirdly swollen, dis- 

 torted, and covered malicious prickles stand forth in dis- 

 agreeable prominence, screened from view no longer by 

 the fair and delicate creeping Ferns and clambering Lyco- 

 podiuins, and seeming to stand unchanged and prosperous 

 when all else fades and dies. In the great meadows through 

 which th path meanders the waving grasses are laid low, 

 and in their place are dismal tracts of black ashes where 

 the bush fires have just swept by. But the dry season is 

 hardly death so much as recuperation. It is a short pause 

 — a sleep in which the expended forces of Nature are once 

 more gathered in. Just as the earth in its summer sol- 

 stice spins out from the sun's control like a restless child, 

 and then, wearied with its wilfulness, lets itself be slowly 

 drawn in again to run its sober winter journey, so its 

 tiny children, who have rioted in all the exuberant 'ex- 

 13 



cesses of spring and summer, need the repose of the slack 

 mouths to restore their energies. — " The River Congo," by 

 H. 11. Johnston, F.Z.S. — Gardeners' Clironicle. 



CHINESE VEGETABLE PRODUCTS. 



In a report of a journey through the provinces of Tsu- 

 ch'uan, Yunnan, and Kwi-chou, from Feb. 11 to June 14, 

 1882) some interesting notes occur on the vegetable pro- 

 ducts of the country traversed. At one part of the journey 

 brick tea is described as being " made up into packets of 

 IS catties in weight. The tea is first enclosed in what 

 looks like dried Banana leaf, and then cased with coarse 

 matting. The packets are long and flat, and are piled ona 

 above another on a wooden framework extending above 

 the carrier's head. At the bottom are usually a couple of 

 half packets, which afford a good rest for the pole which 

 the carrier places under his load when he wants a rest. 

 The maximum load I have hitherto noticed was ten whole 

 packets and two half packets weighing 198 catties — a good 

 load to have on one's back for fifteen days — the tune usu- 

 ally taken by these carriers between Ya-chou and Ta- 

 chien-lu. The ordinary load was eight and nine packets. 

 The freight between these two places is 300 cash a packet, 

 so that if the journey is performed in fifteen days the 

 wages of a carrier of ten packets amount to 200 cash a 

 day. Among carriers of such heavy weights one would 

 expect to find men of remarkable physique, but they seemed 

 to be distinguished for ' want of leg.' The same applies 

 to the salt-carriers. They travel slowly, resting every few 

 yards and giving vent to their feelings, which on such a 

 day must have been anything but amiable, in a low whistle, 

 or rather half-whistle and sigh. The brick tea manufact- 

 ured at Ya-chou for the Tibetan market is altogether dif- 

 ferent from the brick tea manufactured by foreign merch- 

 ants at Hankow. The former is entire leaf and twig 

 loosely pressed, while the latter is tea dust firmly com- 

 pressed into actual brick-shape." " Beyond Tung-ching 

 Hsien the valley contracts, and the hills on either side 

 become more precipitous, rocky, and uncultivated; frequ- 

 ently the bed of the stream occupies the whole valley, 

 while the road runs along the hillside. Some distance 

 south of the ciiy the hills are thickly dotted with the 

 Tea shrub growing on very rocky ground, and we met a 

 number of carriers with bundles of brown leaves and twigs, 

 which we took for dead leaves collected for firewood, but 

 which turned out to be ' tach'a,' great or coarse Tea. It 

 was bound for Ya-chou, and will doubtless find its way 

 back along the same road to Tibet." At another point 

 of the journey the Mulberry, Orange, red Date, and Pear 

 trees were frequently met with ; the Orange is described 

 as a tall tree with a small fruit with a thick and wrinkled 

 skin, so thick indeed that the edible portion of the Orange 

 is reduced to a minimum. A very remarkable fibre, about 

 which something more will, it is hoped, be soon found out, 

 is described in the following paragraph : — " At Hai-t'ang 

 I procured a specimen of a coarse cloth, manufactured 

 from the fibrous root of a grass which grows iu the gullies 

 of the mountains in the neighbourhood. It is called the 

 '. fire cleansing cloth,' and is used for dusting and other 

 purposes. The peculiarity of the cloth is that when it is 

 dirty it is put in the fire, the dirt is consumed, and the 

 cloth is- taken out clean and uninjured and ready for use. 

 I can vouch for the truth of this, having made the ex- 

 periment myself." The white wax insect is said to be the 

 chief produce of Chien-chaug. Little white wax, however, 

 is produced as compared with other producing districts, 

 such as Ohia-ting Fu, which depend entirely on the Ohien- 

 chang valley for their supply of insects, and it has hitherto 

 been matter of surprise that the valley of Chien-chang 

 should produce the insects and not the wax, and Ohia-ting 

 the wax and not the insects. The reason is perfectly 

 simple, however. In the Prefecture of Ohia-ting the Wax 

 tree is extensively grown; in the Valley of Ohien-Chang 

 it is not. The white wax insect does not grow on the 

 Wax tree, but on the Tung-ching tree which is widely 

 grown in the Chien-chang valley. A small twig of this 

 tree, the scientific name of which does not occur, is de- 

 scribed as containing about half-a-dozen round excrescences 

 about the size of a Pea, and innumerable smaller excre- 

 sceiir, s like minute shell-fish clinging to the bark. On 

 | opening one -of the brown glazed Pea-shaped e.\grescences 



