February 2, 1885.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



619 



that, as is the case with cinchona cultivation, 

 chemistry in this way may play an important part, 

 with a sure prospect of success, where knowledge and 

 experience combine to further a branch of industry 

 which finds employment for thousands of natives and 

 yields a large revenue to the State. There is hence 

 every appearance of the tea estates doing a good 

 business at least within the next few years, which, 

 I repeat, they deserve to do owing to tea planters haying 

 derived fresh energy from the adversity gone through 

 instead ol giving way to despair. Should evi m prices 

 fall, which may assuredly be taken for granted, it will 

 be found that apparently planters here work under 

 more advantageous conditions than is the case in Cey- 

 lon or India. I say apparently, because information 

 from ther ' cannot always be relied on, for often out 

 of speculation or to keep up the credit of a threatened 

 firm or bank, fictitiously high figures are put forward. 

 Thus it turned out on closer examination, that the 

 fallen Oriental Bank, to keep up the credit ol its tea 

 plantations, often by means of agents itself boueht in, 

 at fabulously high prices, the tea produced there.* But 

 I am digressing. Our planters seem to have the ad- 

 vantage in soil, which, in Java is so fertile that pro- 

 duction here on a given area is greater than in India 

 or Ceylon. Moreover, as is said by Mr. Money, the 

 Java planters arejin advance of the British in effective 

 cultivation of the soil and especially in the art of prun- 

 ing tea plants. + On the other hand, against this must 

 be set the fact that the economic condition of the Cey- 

 lon, but not the Assam, planters gives them a decided 

 advantage over those in Java. Mr. N. P. Vander Berg 

 has calculated how much tea planters here and in Cey- 

 lon pay altogether in taxes per homo of land, and though 

 I cauitot call to mind the figures exactly, I think they 

 amounted respectively to 13 and 14 guilders per homo. 

 Add besides to this the better and cheaper means of 

 transport in Ceylon, and people will, like us, come to 

 the conclusion that here also the Government should 

 rather strive to lighten than increase the pressure of 

 taxation on the tea growing interest. 



The same correspondent also says that Java cinchona 

 planters have been greatly disappointed by seeds from 

 Government plantations bought at high prices proving 

 of such inferior quality that, in one iustauce, out of 

 25,000 sowed only .t,000 came up. Sometimes even 

 plants raised from them turn out in the end to be of 

 almost valueless varieties, the consequence being that 

 planters prefer cinchona seeds from private plantations. 



Advices from Batavia to the 24th December show 

 that sugar growing in Java is in such a precarious 

 state, that the Batavia Chamber of Commerce has had 

 to mi morialize the Governor General to remit, taxation 

 pressing upon sugar growers, and to lower railway 

 freight rates for their benefit, as the only means to 

 save them from ruin. The Chamber draws the follow- 

 ing picture of how matters stand with the sugar grow- 

 ing interest there : — 



"The gigantic growth of the beet sugar industry has 

 had a deadly influence on prices in consequence. A life 

 and death struggle is going on and, notwithstanding 

 that the yield 01 cane sugar from Java estates has also 

 increased of late years, signs of the decline and decay 

 of the industry in general are showing themselves. 

 What will be the consequences should as may now be 

 feared on good grounds, the struggle end to the dis- 

 advantage of cane sugar ? The large capital required 

 for carrying ou estate operations will henceforth be 

 raised with difficulty. Several plantations which could 

 not meet the demands on them have already had to 



* A malicious and absolutely baseless invention. The sales 

 of tea in Ceylon have been but few, and neither in Oeylon 

 nor anywhere else did the O. B. C. ever purchase tea. We 

 cannot be surprized at these inventions of foreigners, when 

 we notice the untrue statements about Ceylon sent to the 

 Indian Planters' Gazette by one of its correspondents here. — 

 Ed. 



stop working. Gradually more will follow, while only 

 a few happening to be more favourably situated, where 

 cheaper labour aud lower ground rent keep down con- 

 siderably the cost of the raw material, will be enabled 

 thereby to drag on working for a few years longer till 

 they too, overcome in the struggle, will be driven from 

 the industrial field and thus make widely known the 

 disappearance of the industry. This is no exaggeration, 

 your Excellency ; at the present state of sugar prices, 

 banks can with difficulty go on supplying capital, e pcoi 

 ally n>.\ that the end of the crisis cannot yet be fore- 

 cast. It would betoken short-sightedness to count upon 

 better time i for the present. The struggle tor exist- 

 ence will go on long enough to wreck the Java 

 sugar industry, for it must end iu that when on the 

 one side protection is enjoyed while on the other 

 side not only protection is deuied but burdens are 

 laid on, heavy enough in good times but now co- 

 operating in hastening the approaching fall. 

 Grievous indeed is it, in such times as the«e, 

 to hear the Colonial Minister proposing to levy 

 further tixation ou sugar estates which are not 

 under contract with Goverum-nt. The sugar inelustry 

 at this moment may best be likened to a eick mau 

 whose state is precarious aud almost hopeless, lleuc-, 

 when his homeless condition is so well-known, it is cruel, 

 iustead of administering a strengthening remedy to 

 the patient, to extinguish the last sparks of energy 

 on which his only chance of recovery depended. 

 The cries of distress from the dying industry were 

 already heard in all directions, when it was suggested 

 to the parliament in Holland to laise more revenue 

 from sugar growers, or at least to take steps for 

 doing so at some future time, no matter what the 

 future might prove t" be. Sugar is now so low in 

 price that only specially favourably situate 1 estates can 

 be worked at a profit. Enlarging on this then is in 

 our opinion superfluous. At the rat- of 8| guilders 

 per picul for No. 14, few buyers make their appiarance 

 the only purchases made being small quantities of pre- 

 viously stipulated quality. The average value of No. 12 

 is ai preseut 7A guilders per picul. Such a price is 

 only remunerative on estates where the expenses of 

 production and transport are kept down exceptionally 

 low. In default of buyers, the bulk of Java sugar 

 will have to be consigned to Europe at the risk of 

 the growers, to remain long on hand there before being 

 realized, prices being all the while kept low by large 

 stocks of beet sugar iu the market. The protective 

 laws in favour of beet sugar keep Java sugar in the 

 back-ground. In Holland this is intensified by an ex- 

 cise enactment wdiieh has ousted our sugar from the 

 Dutch market. Sugar estates in Java are not protected 

 by the State in any way ; ou the contrary, export 

 duties are levied on their produce, while, for example, 

 in Germany, among other advantages, bonuses are 

 allowed on the expert of beet sugar." 



A P. 1 dang correspondent of the Locomotief states that, 

 owing to large numbers of stones being found in bags 

 of coffee shipped frtim there to Holland, the police at 

 that port are keeping a watchful eye on per; ons con- 

 veying that article on shipboard from (he warehouses, 

 with a view to detect the guilty parties. 



Dn. Beyerinck, one of the most distinguished natural- 

 ists in Holland, has been investigating the origin of the 

 masses of gum collecting ou the limbs of certain kinds of 

 trees, especially plum, apricot and others beariug stone 

 fruits. He finds that the exudation is due to a disease 

 produced by the presence of parasitic fungi; and when 

 health trees are inoculated with the gum tbus produced, 

 they speedily contract the disorder, which is highly con- 

 tagious. The. disease is disseminated by the drying of 

 IB) by oxidation, and its circulation iu the wind, 

 which thus' wafts the germs for many rods, so th 

 diseased tree may infect a whole plantation. — Ami 

 Cultivator. 



