May i, 1885,] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



8*3 



but increases the strength without taking from the flavor of 

 the tea. 



18. Excessive temperature is against good fermentation. 



20. Tlio aim should be to keep the temperature as even 

 as possible during fermentation. 



30. Oare given to the withering is a step towards good 

 color, but will not ensure it. Great strength cannot be ob- 

 tained from a poor jilt of plant, notwithstauding heavy 

 rolling. 



44. Bulking is better carried out after final-firing, as that 

 operation may of itself be uneven. Tea final-fired just before 

 bulking retains sufficient heat ■ for packing purposes. It is 

 not desirable to pack tea with too much heat in it. 



Strathellie, 30th March, 1885. Arthur E. Scovell. 



In yesterday's article we find we spoke of Mr. Cameron 

 as having been 30 years in India. In reality he had only 

 been 18, and we ought to have said that the Memorandum 

 left by him was the accumulated and concentrated experi- 

 ence of 30 years' manufacturing on Indian estates by Mr. 

 Cameron and others before him. — Ibid. 



VEGETARIANISM. 



Professor Mayor, of the Cambridge University, the 

 president of the Society, at a recent meeting of the 

 Vegetarian Society, in Exeter Hall. London, said ! 

 — The Vegetarian Society, whose history, scope and oper- 

 ations I am told to describe in fen minutes, surveys man- 

 kind from China to Peru. It appeals from the barbar- 

 isms of civilization to ideal man eating in Eden of the 

 seed-bearing herb, grains, and pulses, and the fruit-bearing 

 treo. It labors for the advent of that reign of peace 

 when none shall hurt or destroy in all the holy mountain 

 The Vegetarian Society draws its witnesses from the sacred 

 books of all nations, from poet and historian and sage. 

 Pythagoras, Zeno, Socrates, Epicurus, Ausonius, Seneca, 

 Plutarch ; the men of Plutarch, Curius and Fabricius ; the 

 simple races who triumphed over luxurious empires ; the 

 Persians of Cyrus, the Greeks of Leonidas, the Roman 

 porridge eaters, pxltiphadi, the Swedes of Gustavus Vasa ; 

 the modern Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Zulus ; the miners 

 of Chili, the Hudson's Bay tappers, the Hindu and the 

 Russian, the porters of Smyrna; these are but a sample 

 of the evidence collected by Dr. Lambe, Sir John Sinclair, 

 Sylvester Graham, John Smith, of Alalton, Howard Wil- 

 liams and Robert Springer. The baits by which our re- 

 cruits have been drawn are various. There are Bible 

 vegetarians ; the Bible church in Salford and in Pennsyl- 

 vania makes vegetarianism and teetotalism a part and 

 parcel of its church discipline ; there are scientific vege- 

 tarians ; there are vegetarians from benevolence ; there 

 are the aesthetic vegetarians. As a matter of taste they 

 would cleanse our throughfares from shambles, they would 

 release our women from handling bleeding carcases. There 

 are vegetaraus from thrift. Some twenty years ago Dr. 

 Edward Smith and Dr. Guy found the one that our labor- 

 ing population and the other that our soldiers in hospital 

 throve in inverse proportion to the cost of their diet ; surely 

 old Hesiod said truly, " The half is more than the whole." 

 There are experimental vegetarians converted by observ- 

 ation. There are vegetarians from necessity ; they have 

 exhausted the specifics of the physicians, and in despair re- 

 turn to nature. Dr. Beketoff, rector of Petersburg 

 University, declares that the future is with vegetarians. 

 And the reason is plain. Ten of us can live where one 

 flesh-eater would starve. Increase the demand for veget- 

 able products and the supply increases and the price falls; 

 increase the demand for animal products and the supply 

 diminishes while the price is enhanced. Carey, the 

 American economist, strongly insist on this law. Taku a 

 few examples of animal substances displaced by mineral or 

 vegetable : steel pons have superseded quill, paper has su- 

 perseded parchment, wood has superseded horn, cotton, linen, 

 paper have displaced wool, silk and feathers, gutta-percha 

 and indiarubber have displaced leather, gas and electric 

 light have displaced wax. tallow, and whale oil. Animal 

 power has been displaced by steam, and electricity and 

 gas, wind and wtter, tides and solar heat. The saddle 

 horse has been displaced by bicycles and tricycles. Butter 

 has given place to .jam and vegetable oils. — Australasian. 



PLANTING IN NETHERLANDS INDIA. 

 (Translated from the " Straits Timet ".) 

 Java Coffee. — Uuder this heading a communicated 

 article appears in one of our Mid Java contempor- 

 aries, pointing out that in uo country throughout 

 the world is such good coffee produced as in our 

 colonies. Other countries, such as Brazil, yield it 

 is true heavier crops of coffee but not a better 

 sort. Moreover in Java sufficient labour is available, 

 while Javanese who are born and raised in the 

 coffee districts are better informed as to its cultiv- 

 ation than many Europeans. The main consider- 

 ation is thorough curing, and this does not depend 

 on good mechanical appliances but on good drying 

 of the coffee. The lowness of the prices now ruling 

 is the result of over production, but when onoe 

 the coffee leaf disease makes its way into Brazil, 

 Java coffee will once more take up its old 

 standpoint, aod those who have sunk their money 

 in coffee estates will, in the writer's opinion, realize 

 enormous profits within a few years. 



A correspondent of a Java planting newspaper, 

 in drawing attention to the ravages of leaf disease 

 in Ceylon, lays stress on the circumstance that 

 nothing has been done officially to trace out the so 

 far unknown sources and causes of that disease in 

 Java, where, sometimes, healthy looking estates are 

 suddenly attacked within two days, the disease all 

 at once showing itself on all the coffee trees, there 

 being every likelihood, should matters go on in th- 

 way, of enormous losses being incurred by the plant 

 ing interest. 



Outta.— From Batavia, a correspondent writes to us as 

 follows : — It will doubtless be remembered how the cir- 

 cumstance that the greater demand for gutta percha for 

 industrial purposes in connection with the wasteful 

 way of getting that article in the jungles it is found, 

 has everywhere given rise to serious anxiety lest 

 the stock of it might run out. As the best gutta 

 comes from old trees the cultivation of gutta percha 

 trees is seldom an object of pursuit by means 

 of private enterprize, from its being hard to raise 

 capital for the purpose, owing to returns on it having 

 to be awaited such a long time. Hence it is that the 

 Netherlands India Government has taken the matter 

 iu band, as others had done, and even, not long ago, 

 sent Mr. Burck of the State Botanical Garden here, 

 on a miesion to Sumatra to carry on researches re- 

 garding this kind of tree, the results being embodied 

 by him in an interesting report. He, hovever, did not 

 confine himself to purely scientific investigations, but also 

 brought with him seeds from admirably suitable and 

 mature trees, and successfully sowed them in the 

 State Botanical Gardens. The seedlings throve splendidly 

 in the nurseries, and at the setting iu of the present 

 West monsoon had to be transplanted into open ground 

 on land;, set apart for future Government gutta percha 

 forests. For that purpose, three hundred guilders 

 a month were required forseveral months. The Gov- 

 ernor-General has however declined to sanction the 

 outlay. 



Sugar. — The Surabaya Sugar Growers' Association lias 

 memorialized the Governor-fieneral of Nethcrlauds 

 India in favor of deferring for two years the lew 

 tit 1 xcise taxation on Java sugar estates due in 

 iss.'i aod 1886, on the ground that if their application 

 be granted confidence would return and e.ij ital become 

 more readily available ; otherwise Chinese capital will 

 take the place of European capital. If State aid be 

 let used them, there is said to be every ground for 

 dreading a commercial crisis this year in Java far 

 worse than that at the end of last year, 



A novel source of Government revenue will shortly 

 be turned to account iu Java, by fanning out the 

 right to collect turtle's eggs on the seashore within 



