December i, 1884.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



445 



& Co., were unable to meet their obligations, similar specul- 

 ations in 1872 having brought them down. The suspension 

 is only temporary, as they expect to resume at an early 

 date. The same may be said in regard to the Milan factory, 

 so far as the time of suspension is concerned. It is under- 

 stood to have seemed an extension of six months from 

 the Italian National Lank, and will probably be in operation 

 on a smaller scale than hitherto. One of the misfortunes of 

 the factory has been that it had but a limited consuming 

 trade for its brand, and was obliged to seek the open market 

 for by far the greater part of its out-put. A large amount 

 of Milan quinine has in one way and another gone to the 

 United States, but during the past two years there has been 

 no time when many thousand ounces of its product were uot 

 held by bankers at Genoa, Milan and other Italian cities, 

 by or London houses. Much money has been lost by the 

 holders of these hypothecated lots, and the fact that they 

 have been hanging over the market accounts for much of the 

 demoralization that has prevailed during the last two years. 

 The capacity of the Milan factory is said to have been popul- 

 arly over-estimated because the offerings of its quinine on 

 the open market represented so large a percentage of its 

 total product, comparatively little of which disappeared in 

 regular channels of consumption which it controlled. The 

 factory of Zimmer at Frankfort and Boehringer and Sons at 

 Mannheim are said really to equal in capacity the Milanworks. 

 It might be well to mention here that Alex. Boehringer 

 has no interest in the business controlled by 0. F. Boehringer 

 and Sous of Mannheim, or the factory of Boehringer and 

 Meier, of Stuttgart, manufacturers of minor chemicals and 

 bottlers of Milan quinine. The bottling arrangement is a 

 joint compact, and was entered into by the Milan factory 

 for the purpose of overcoming any prejudice that might 

 exist in Germany to a quinine having a foreign label. 



Mr. Boehringer's scheme of controlling the bark market 

 involved the formation of the quinine syndicate, and the 

 payment of better prices for bark aud au advance in quinine 

 with an effort to induce importers of bark not to make ad- 

 vances, thus preventing a surplus which would be a benefit 

 to neither manufacturers nor shippers. The syndicate was 

 dilatory in advancing prices on quinine, although it is under- 

 stood that many of its members were in favor of an advance, 

 and there has been no time since wheu the manufact- 

 urers of quinine could make up for the profits which they 

 failed to gather iu duriug the existence of the syndicate. 

 As is well known, the syndicate was short lived — its exist- 

 ence having terminated after an experience of eight months. 

 Charges have been made of underhand work, but it devolves 

 upon some one else to confirm them. At all events, the 

 straightforward houses claim to be the sufferers. One or 

 two pages of history in this connection are missing, and 

 probably the unknown will never be brought to light. After 

 the disruption of the syndicate, Mr. Boehringer went to 

 America, arriving here on the day that Powers and "Weight- 

 man's factory was destroyed by fire. It is understood tint 

 his original intention was, in view of the abbreviating of his 

 interests and his influence, in the Milan factory, "to connect 

 himself with an American quinine factory, but not the one 

 last mentioned. The fire changed his plans, however, and 

 he went direct to Philadelphia and submitted an offer, ou his 

 own responsibility, to transfer the factory and stock on 

 hand at Milan over to Powers and "Weightmau until their 

 factory was re-built. After communicating with the directors 

 of the Italian works, an agreement to the above effect was 

 entered into, and gladlj accepted at Milan, as Mr. Boehringer 

 well knew it would be. Doubtless this temporary leasing of 

 the works to the American firm delayed the failure which 

 promptly followed the termination of the lease. Mr. Boehr- 

 inger is now understood to have retired altogether from the 

 Milan Company in which his interests is reported to have 

 been small for some time past. He has succeeded Mr. 

 Bardorff as managing director of the Verein Chemischer 

 Fabriken, at Mannheim, manufacturers of magnesia and 

 minor chemicals. — New York Drug "Reporter. 



ONE OF THE WOOD CARI1YING MOTHS : A 

 TEA-LEAF EATER. 

 The following is from a planting correspondent ad- 

 dressed to the editor : — 



Kelani Valley. 

 Dear Sir, — By this post I send you a " poochie " 

 which I found feed ng greedily on the leaves of a tea 



bush. The "poochie" in question was devouring both 

 old and young leaves from top to bottom of a shoot 

 on a bush pruned about two months ago. Will your 

 entomological correspondent kindly say what it is ? — 

 Yours truly, E. 



Iu the absence of our entomological authority from 

 Colombo at the time, we seut the ten-leaf-devouring 

 poochie from a Kelani Valley correspondent to our 

 botanical referee, who reports as follows : — 



"Some years ago I sent you a note on the subject of 

 one of the small wood-carrying moths, the female of 

 which entirely denuded flamboyant tree leaves iu Kollu- 

 pitiya, and I got you to copy what Sir J. E. Tennent 

 said about these peculiar insects in his Nat. Hist, of 

 Ceylon, pp. 430-2, aud I do not think you can do 

 better than reproduce the same matter with a full 

 li«t of this family from the Lepidoptera of Ceylon, 

 pp. 101 to 107, all of the species, 9, being iUnst- 

 trated in plate 118 of that work ; but the inform- 

 ation given respecting popular or useful information 

 in this work is so meagre, that a searcher after such 

 must depend much on his own experience or inward 

 consciousness as to his conclusions on the subject. 

 I am quite familiar with the billet of wood-cases of 

 some of the females of these moths, and a friend 

 brought me some from Ambagamuwa a few days ago, 

 which S 1 on took to climbing to the roof of my bath- 

 room, &c. The very curious figures given by Sir J. 

 E. Ttnueut of four of these ingeniously-made up houses 

 for the females are uot referred to by Moore 

 though he quotes a portion of the letterpress. Tea- 

 leaves were not dreamt of in the philosophy of these 

 iusects when they were described aud figured, and 

 therefore, out of the nine species found in Ceylou it 

 is recorded that two of thern feed on the leaves of 

 the pumpelmoB or shaddock, and a third on Eugenia 

 car^ophyllaium ; and the other figures are so unlike the 

 one that ate the flamboyant leaves, that I think it 

 has not as yet been recorded. 



"But pardon me if X express surprise at the ap- 

 parently extraordinary propensity which now exists 

 for the discovery in Ceylon of enemies to all kinds 

 of new or old products whilst the old facts still hold 

 good that the great Creator of the universe will bring 

 'blasting and mildew on the land ' when it is necess- 

 ary to do so for the balance of Nature as He has done 

 from the time that the taste of that forbidden tree 

 brought death into the world. 



" Your correspondent's poochie is most like the figure 

 of the Eumeta Layardii in plate US, fig. 2ft, in the 

 larval case, and the principal figure in Sir J. E. 

 Tennent's plate. The insect seems so easily discovered 

 on tea plants, that there should not be much trouble 

 in collecting them and squashing them under foot. I 

 do not think that this large one will prove a great 

 enemy of the tea plaut ; some of the smaller ones 

 may, if they take to tea instead of their usual food. 



(From Sir J. E. Tennent's Natural History.) 

 The Wood-carrying Moth. — There is another family of 

 insects, the singular habits pf which will not fail to attract 



the traveller in the cultivated tracts of Ceylon these are 



moths of the genus Oiketieus, of which the females are 

 devoid of wings, and some possess no articulated feet. 

 Their larva; construct for themselves cases, which they 

 suspend to a branch frequently of the pomegranate, sur- 

 rounding them with the stems of leaves, and thorns or 

 pieces of twigs bound together by threads, till the whole 

 presents the appearance of a bundle of rods about an 

 inch and a half long; and, from the resemblance of this 

 to a Koman fasces, one African species has obtained the 

 name of " Lictor." The German entomologists denominated 

 the group Sacktrayer, the Sinhalese call thorn Dara-katti i 

 or" billets of firewood," and regard the inmates as human 

 beings, who as a punishment for stealing wood in some 

 former state of existence, have been condemned to undergo 

 a metempsychosis under the form of these insects. 



