766 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 



[April i, 1885. 



Ratjialane Estate of 350 acres of cinnamon and coco- 

 nuts situated at Ratmalane, which formerly belonged to 

 the late Mr. A. Gun ha s, we learn, changed hands— the 

 lucky purchaser being Mr. 0. H. De Soysa and tlieconsider- 

 ation £4100 sterling. The price is thought a fair one as 

 times ago. The average is £]l'10per acre oil round for 

 cinnamon and coconuts . Miss Stubbs is the vendor, Colonel 

 Meaden being the local agent. — " Examiner." 



Erythrina Indica in Colombo. — One morning we 

 noticed, not crows but squirrels, the common ground 

 thrushes and little tomtits all busy getting somethiny, 

 nectar or insects, out of the flowers of an Erythrina. 

 They were not eating the petals. We have never as yet 

 noticed the sunbirds, those true nectar-suckers, meddling 

 with the Erythrina blossoms, and, as we know the 

 squirrels eat white-ants, we cannot help suspecting the 

 attraction was in the shape of insects. 



PaPiSj* Bottles are now made ou a large scale in 

 Germany and Austria. The paper must be well sized, and 

 is composed as follows : — Ten parts of rags, forty of straw, 

 fifty of brown wood pulp. The paper is impregnated or 

 coated on both sides with sixty parts of defibrinated blood, 

 thirty-five parts of lime powder, and five parts of sulphate 

 of alumina. After drying, ten or twelve rolled leaves are 

 coated again, placed over each other, and then put into 

 heated moulds. The albumine of the blood forms a com- 

 bination, on pressure with the lime, which is perfectly im- 

 permeable to spirituous liquors. These bottles are made 

 in two pieces, which are joined afterwards. — Buryoyne, 

 Burbidye, Cyriax § Furries' Price Current. 



Indian Tea in Holland is thus noticed in the 

 Indian Mercury : — With regard to British India tea, 

 which, since the Melbourne Exhibition of &S80, has been 

 placed on our market (with the assistance of the British 

 India Government), and whose advocates made such a 

 fuss about, we can but say that our anticipations 

 and hopes regarding its success have not been realized. 

 The importation of this special kind to Holland 

 amounted in 1882 to 1,000,000 English lb., whilst in 

 18^3 only two shipments came to hand, together 

 1,400 chests of 40 lb. each, and this year we have 

 not received a single case. Indian teas, notwithstand- 

 ing the energetic and efficacious way in which their 

 sale in Holland has been pushed, have made no 

 headway — in fact, they were pronounced too strong 

 for the public taste, the consumptions gradually dim- 

 inished and prices declined. The loss on the bst 

 shipments has therefore been very heavy. However, 

 as two well-known houses here are now begiuning to 

 mix British Indian quality with China teas, we mvy 

 still hope, later on, to work up a fair'y good trade 

 in the article with India. 



Flavouring Tea with Flowers. — (Extract from 

 from Mr. Holmes's letter of 13th Feb. 1S85 regarding 

 Ceylon Tea sent to him )— I think, that, if the flowers 

 of CamtUia sasanqua were added, it would improve 

 the flavour. The Japan' se use this plant for the 

 purpose. The Ceylon tea to my mind has too much 

 of the flavour of half-decayed or fermented leaves. 

 However, that is a matter of taste. The Chinese, I 

 believe, flavour their tea with flowers of Oka Jragrans, 

 Jaaminum sambac, and Chloranthus inconspicuus. 

 [The above extract of a letter from the Curator of 

 the Pharmaceutical Society has been sent to us. The 

 specimen of Ceylon tta sent to Mr. Holmes must have 

 been inferior, or he must be a bad judge. For a 

 list of flowers used by the Chinese, see Mr. Brace's 

 Essay published at the Observer Office. We spoke to 

 the late Dr. Thwaites about using flowers, and his 

 opinion was adverse. We have never heard of Indian 

 or Ceylon planters using flowers,— Ed.] 



"ROUGH ON RATS." 

 Clears out rats, mice, roaches, flies, ants, bed-bugs, 

 beetles, insects, skunks, chipmunks, gophers. Druggists. 

 W. E. Smith & Co., Madras, Sole Agmts. 



Plumbago in Aberdeenshire.— Mr. Ferguson, of 

 Kinmundy, read a paper before the Edinburgh Geo- 

 logical Society at the last meeting ' On certain Deposits 

 of Graphite ::nd Iron in Aberdeenshire.' Details were 

 given of veins of haematite iron and manganese which 

 are very extensive, and many of the veins were found 

 to be as rich as the Spanish ore. Plumbago is plentiful, 

 the only question being its pr duction and transport so 

 as to be used economically. — Athenaxm. [Mr. Ferguson's 

 paper ought to be of interest to us in Ceylon : who 

 amongst m kuows the Laird of Kinmundy well enough 

 to ask him to allow the paper to be reprinted out 

 here ?— Ed.] 



Darjeelixg. — A fair amount of rain has fallen during 

 the last ten days, and it goes without saying that it has 

 done a deal of good to all kinds of crops in the district. 

 More rain is needed though for tea cultivation, and espe- 

 cially so where large areas of seed at stake have been 

 planted out. With regard to tea it is quite impossible to 

 venture even a guess as to the result of the last season's 

 working on gardens which have shipped their teas to Lon- 

 don direct as a good deal has still to be sold, but it may 

 very safely be anticipated that a few gardens will pay a 

 fair dividend not at all equal to those realized on the crop 

 of 1S83, but still enough to keep the pot boiling, and that 

 is saving a very great deal in these hard times, and con- 

 sidering how tea has been depreciated in the market. It 

 is pretty generally acknowledged by practical men that the 

 first invoices of last season's teas from this district were 

 not in some respects quite as good as those of 1893, but at 

 the same time it is very generally considered that the teas 

 were often sold under their real value. Certainly there 

 was none the less care in manufacture, and it was the mis- 

 fortune not the fault of the vast majority of planters in the 

 hills that the market was more or less disorganized the 

 whole of last year. Rigid economy seems to be the order 

 of the day for the coming seasou. It remains to be seen 

 whether the economy will be carried out in the right direc- 

 tion or uot. — Indian Planters' Gazette. 



Roraima.— A telegram has beeu received at Kew 

 giving the welcome news that Mr. Everard F. im 

 Thurn has at last ascended Roraima. This has been 

 the cherished obj.-ct of botanical exploration iu S >uth 

 Amer ca for the last quarter of a century. The ex- 

 peuses of Mr. im Thurn's expedition have beeu borne 

 in equal shares by the Government grant of the Royal 

 Society and the Royal Geographical Society. The 

 latest news from Mr. im Thurn was in a letter dated 

 December Gth from the south side of the mountain, 

 and the following passage describes the position immedi- 

 ately before the linal attack :— " Before we came 

 to Roraima itself we had four days' walkiug thiough 

 a purely savannah, but most glorious, country and 

 over splendid mountain pasres, guided by an Arecoona, 

 who snid, villain that he is, th:it he knew the way to 

 Roraima. But at a village marked on the map as Ipele- 

 monta, ou the Aroopa River, anl with a considerable 

 mouutain pass still between us and Roraima, our villain 

 guide at last admitted that the nad for some distance 

 had been quite new to him, and that he now knew 

 not how to proceed further. However, at last we pro- 

 cured a guide, and came, in some four hours, out of 

 our difficulties at Ipelemonta (its real name, by the 

 way, is Toorarking), into this inconceivably magnificent 

 valley, and are installed iu a village on the actual 

 southern slopes of Roraima itself. Yesterday Perkins 

 and I ascended the »lope of Roraima to a height of 

 5,600ft. to a most beautiful spot— a very garden of 

 orchids and most beautiful ami strange plaots. To- 

 morrow, after despatching the bearer of this scrawl, 

 we go up to the same place with a lot of Arecoonas, 

 who are to build us a house, in which we inteid to 

 stop for a week, or as much longer as we may find 

 desirable. I may men 1 ion that we have already seen, 

 close to where our house is to be, a place where the 

 mountain seems accessible ; but it looks so easy that I 

 am convinced it is impossible at that point." — Nature. 



