April i, 1885.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



7G3 



"Wood Ashes as a Mwtki;. Ashus iknpcove all sails 

 that are deficient in the principles which they contain, 

 and are especially adapted to root crops, grains, and 

 grasses. "When applied in connection with bone dust, 

 they produce, says a contemporary, excellent results on 

 turnips, potatoes — all the roots in fact, clover, peas, beans, 

 and the grasses. Ashes and gypsum mixed form an ad- 

 mirable dressing. Ashes are applied in a variety of ways. 

 They may be drilled in the soil, sown broadcast, or mixed 

 with the muck heap. Repeating the dressing of ashes 

 without a sufficient amount of vegetable or yard manure 

 will in time prove detrimental, but there is not much 

 danger of this mistake. Coal ashes are decidedly inferior 

 to those made from wood, and depend largely on their 

 mechanical influence for value. They are better adapted 

 to heavy than to light son's. — Land and Water. 



Cocaine. — Our readers are familiar at least with the 

 reputation of the Coca, or Erythroxylon Coca, the leaves 

 of which are used as a stimulant, like Tea or Coffee, 

 and winch allay hunger and avert the sense of fatigue. 

 This much has been known for years, and was put to 

 the test by the late .Sir K. Christison. Tts properties 

 were supposed to be due to a substance identical, or 

 nearly so, with thein, the active principle of Tea and 

 Coffee. Latterly this principle has been isolated, and has 

 been found to possess such anaesthetic properties as even 

 to render the eye insensible to touch. Its use in surgical 

 operations is,- therefore, likely to become very important 

 and to be extended to tooth-drawing and other minor 

 surgical operations. At present its high price forbids 

 more than experimental use, but the results have been 

 so uniformly successful that there is little doubt that 

 as the demand increases the manufacture will be extended 

 and cheapened. — Gardeners' Chronicle. 



Aerial Motors of various forms have been devised, 

 which adapt themselves automatically to changes in the 

 direction of the wind ; and the appended figure shows arecent 

 foreign invention for this purpose (as well as for increased 

 utilization of power), which is called the pantanemone^ or 

 " universal windmill. The cut is copied from La Nature, and 

 shows merely a lecture-room model of the apparatus, designed 

 to exhibit the principle upon which its construction is 

 based. Two plane surfaces in the form of semicircles are 

 mounted at right angles to each other upon a horizontal 

 shaft, and at an angle of forty-five degrees with re- 

 spect to the latter. It results from this, that the 

 apparatus will operate (even without being set), what- 

 ever be the direction of the wind, except when it blows 

 perpendicularly upon the axle. Experiment shows that 

 it does about twenty per cent more work per year than 

 can be obtained with other mills. Three of the machines 

 are now working in France. The first of these has been 

 running for nine years in the vicinity of Poissy, where 

 it lifts about forty thousand liters of water to a height 

 of twenty meters, every twenty-four hours, in a wind 

 of a velocity of from seven to eight meters per second. 

 The second raises about a hundred and fifty thousand 

 liters of water to the Villejuif reservoir, at a height of 

 ten meters, every twenty-four hours, in a wind of from 

 five to six meters. The third supplies the laboratory of 

 the Moutsouris observatory. The machine is easily made 

 and tested. — Popular Science Xeirs. 



A New Application of Indiarubber. — Among the 

 many curious and interesting things that attract the 

 attention of the visitor to the Health Exhibition, now 

 open in London, is a small boat, floating in a tank of 

 water, and bearing on its deck a variety of glass and 

 porcelain dishes. The water is thrown into commotion 

 from beneath, and the boat pitches and tosses upon the 

 waves ; but the fragile cargo is not thrown overboard, 

 as one would expect it to be. Are the dishes glued 

 or cemented to the deck? or what is the seeret of 

 their mysterious stability V It is simply a new application 

 of that protean substance, Indiarubber. A ring of the 

 material, in the familiar " red vulcanized " form, is insertni 

 in the bottom of each dish ; and this makes it almost imposs- 

 ible to overturn the article. The table may be tipped at an 

 angle of forty-five, and even of sixty, degrees, and yet the 

 dishes will cling to it. The larger cut does not exaggerate 

 the possible inclination consistent with stability. \V~e need 

 not say in how many cases this increased stability will 



be an advantage,— as in carrying dishes from room to 

 room _ on trays, in giving food to persons sick in bed, 

 and in the table arrangments of ships at sea. The 

 "racks" on the tab'e of the oce&D steamer, the very 

 sight of which, as some one has said, is "enough to 

 make one seasick," may be dispensed with if these 

 '■ irreversible " dishes are used. It may be added that 

 the risk of breaking crockery, especially on the marble- 

 topped tables of rcstaurauts, is greatly diminished by 

 this device ; and the noisy clatter of dishes is well-nigh 

 done away with— which alone would be a full compens- 

 ation for the extra expense. We shall be surprised there- 

 fore, if this new application of Indiarubber does not soon 

 win its way into general adoption. — Popular Science News, 



Blue GkJM TREES. — As showing the rapidity of the growth 

 of our blue gum trees in California, the S&nta Ana Herald 

 says :— " A log cut from a blue gum tree on H. H. Roper's 

 place has been sent to the New Orleans Exposition. It 

 was of seven years growth, would weigh probably 500 lb. ; 

 and measured 3 feet through." — Melbourne Leader. 



Cinchona Ledcertana as a Species. — Mr. E. M. Holmes 

 read a paper before the Linnean Society on Nov. 20, 

 wherein he expressed the opinion that under the name of 

 0. Ledgeriana a number of varieties or forms, and prob- 

 ably some hybrids, of Cinchona calisaya are now under 

 cultivation in the British Colonies. He believed that if 

 more attention were paid to the characters afforded by 

 the bark of the trees, taken in conjunction with the 

 other botanical characters of flower and fruit, these 

 varieties and hybrids would be more easily defined 

 and recognised. He considers that the plant published 

 under the name of C. Ledgeriana by Dr. Trimen was 

 probably referable to "WeddeU's Cinchona calisaya var. 

 pallida as a horticultural form, for which the author 

 proposed the name Trimeniana. — Gardeners' Chronicle. 



Insect Pests. — A correspondent at Berhampore sends 

 us the following:— " The word Sooa-poca, put into Eng- 

 lish, would be the needle- worm. It gets this name from 

 being covered with hair, each of which is from one-eighth 

 to two-eighths of an inch long, stiff enough and pointed 

 enough to penetrate the human skin on the slightest 

 contact, causing great agony, and if not extracted, a diffic- 

 ult thing, from its being so fine, as to be scarcely dis- 

 cernible to the naked eye, it causes a festering sore. One 

 of my junior teachers came to school a short time ago with 

 one of his fingers very painful, and much swollen, by one 

 of these caterpillars having fallen upon his hand. They 

 appear to grow from one to two inches in length, and are 

 to be found in every garden and leafy spot in our part 

 of Bengal. I expect, if you will tell any malee in Cal- 

 cutta, he will bring you one for personal inspection. When 

 matured, they climb up the garden wall, and under the 

 projecting part of the coping weave a kind of web, in which 

 you will find a number of their poisonous hairs. Under this 

 web, which is very thin_ you will find the chrysalis of the 

 insect fastened to the edge of the wall. I suspect, the 

 chrysalis turns into the common little white or yellow but- 

 terfly like those we, as bo3'S, used to term the 'cabbage 

 butterfly' in England. They injure leafy plants, but will 

 not, I am told, touch the rice plant. Mango grafts 

 are often damaged by them, and, if I remember right, 

 I have seen them on rose bushes. Mr. J. has just come 

 back from IMassey, and was telling me a few hours ago, 

 that the lentile, known as urkur or ruhur along the river 

 bank, was eaten up by them, the pods not being touched. 

 He saw them in large numbers crawling down to the 

 water's edge, senselessly entering into the water to be de- 

 voured by the fish. He was struck with the peculiarity of 

 their all going in a westerly direction. I sent for an old 

 rustic about b'5 years of age, and sought information on 

 the point. He said, he had intended, but had forgotten 

 to tell me, that when on an errand last week, he saw 

 large numbers of them, all proceeding iu a westerly 

 direction near the large tank in the station. They were 

 common, be said, injuring leafy plants, but he had never 

 observed them in such large numbers. My rustic informant 

 could not say anything about the best method of dealing 

 with them, but suggested, that perhaps lighting fire and 

 smoking them might answer. I asked, ' how will you make 

 fire in a lentile crop'/' He smiled, and said, that was true, 

 and when they came in such vast numbers, what ruuld 

 be done." — Indian Ayricu'Uiv st. 



