S46 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [May i, 1885. 



Silkworms. — There has lately been cultivated in 

 Spain a new silk-worm, Atticus Pernyi, the peculiarity 

 of which is its habit of feeding on oak-leaves. It is 

 described as hearty and fecund, producing two crops 

 of eggs every Summer, and making cocoons much larger 

 than those of the mulberry-feeder, Tho silk, when 

 spun, is very strong and handsome. Near Port Mahon 

 great success has followed the experiment of raising 

 these warms on trees in the open air. — New York Hour. 



Vegetarianismus. — The Saturday 'Review sums up 

 the vegetarian controversy as follows : — All we are 

 concerned at present to maintain, and to support by 

 the practically unauimouB consent of sane men, is that 

 animal food is, in a healthy, hungry, human stomach, 

 the most powerful as well as the most rapidly active 

 ingredient in the available ordinary dietary. We also 

 desire to point out the change of front on the part of 

 the vegetarians, whose cry now is that their alimeits 

 are stronger, instead of weaker, than those of the meat- 

 oater. This is no longer a mere heresy, to employ the 

 word in a loose sense ; it is an acute mental disease ; 

 it is, to coin a term, Vegetarianismus. 



Diversified Indostey is the salvation of a country, 

 diversified farming the safeguard of its agriculture against 

 distress. Any man or community that depends on a single 

 industry is sure to have " hard sledding" some of the 

 time. But with varied products he may have more than 

 one string to his bow. Au illustration of how diversity 

 aids the entire community is in the following case : " A 

 farmer on Russia River, California, ten years ago owned 

 one hundred acres of wheat laud, from which he derived 

 an annual profit of §1,000. He cut it into five-acre tracts 

 and sold it to hop and fruit growers. Now the same one 

 hundred acres supports eleven families, and yielded this 

 year a profit of $!32,000, a single acre producing JifiOO in 

 plums.'' — Exchange. 



Vine Growing and the Phylloxera. — From au 

 interesting paper in the Journal of the Statistical 

 Society, we have reas-uring information about the 

 checking of the Phylloxera in France. The effect 

 altogether had been to diminish the area under 

 vineyards by 1,400,000 acres, and the average annual 

 production by .'150,000,000 gallons. The price of 

 French common wines rising from Is lOd per 

 gallon in 1876 to 2s Od in 1SS1. Many thousands 

 of acres of vineyards destroyed by the disease have 

 been replanted in a more sandy soil, the American 

 vine being substituted, while various remedies, sulphur, 

 submersion, &c. , seem to have helped to stay 

 the progress of the disease. Details will be given 

 in the '/'. A. 



Among the sources of Petroleum for commerce, 

 Venezuela has long been neglected. All alone the 

 base of the Cordilleras, between the Catalumbia and 

 Zulia rivers, are innumberable fountains of petroleum 

 of excellent quality. Near the confluence of the rivers 

 Tara and Sardinarte, is a sandy space, where are found 

 several cylindrical holes, from which streams of hot 

 petroleum violently gush, causing a noise like a loco- 

 motive throwing off steam. The forest thereabouts, 

 called El Inferno, is cool with oil vapors. Nearly six 

 thousand gallons of oil are discharged daily, but it is 

 mingled with water and re-absorbed as it falls into 

 the loose calcareous ground. In various other parts 

 of Venezuela oil is found and gas-wells exist. The 

 " pitch-lake " of Trinidad is allied to this phenomenon, 

 and has long been well known. This lake has an 

 area of about a hundred a^res and occupies a cavity 

 of unknown depth in a swampy plain. The bitumen 

 is porous and only slightly flexible— never plastic — 

 yet when a cart-load is dug out of the surface, the 

 hole fills up in a short time. The Government leases 

 the privilege of digging this asphalt to three firms, 

 who, together, export about fifty thousand tons a year, 

 the larger part of which is sent to the United States. 

 -New York Hour. 



Mortgages in Brazil. — How does this read from a 

 country that wishes to attract immigration ; — " The 

 Bank of Brazil alone has mortgages on 63G plant- 

 ations ; these 636 men hold, at least, 53,760,800,000 square 

 metres, at the low value of the surveys worth 53,552,955^740." 

 Uazeta de Noticias, Feb. 12. And still they are not happy ! 

 — Rio News. 



The Cheapest and Best Insecticide. — M Pasteur 

 states that bisulphite of carbon is the cheapest and 

 most efficacious of all antiseptics, and that it is also 

 the, best insecticide known, especially in tropical coun- 

 tries—please note that. It costs but the fraction of a 

 penny per ponnd to produce. In France upwards of 

 eight million pounds of it are annually used to prevent 

 the ravages of the phylloxera. It is said to be capable 

 of such purification as not only to lose its objection- 

 able smell, but to become almost a perfume. — Dr. 

 'Taylor's Science Gossip in the" Australasian." 



The Silk-propucing Atlas Moth of Ceylon 

 is the subject of interesting notes by Alfred Wailly 

 in the Journal of the Society of Arts, which shall 

 be reproduced in full in the Tropical Agriculturist. 

 Mr. Wailly received from a lady aud gentleman in 

 Ceylon in September last, the largest proportion of 

 live cocoons ever got from a tropical country ; the 

 larva? had been reared on growing cinnamon trees. 

 The possibility of establishing a valuable industry 

 among the Sinhalese people ought to receive attention 

 from the Director of Public Instruction. 



The touacco plantations of Southern Hungary are 

 threatened by a terrible pest, viz. the so-called wire-worm, 

 which dft'ers from the ordinary tobacco-worm, inasmuch 

 as it enters the stem of the plant just above the root 

 and then works its destructive way right up to the 

 flowers. Plants thus attacked yield no tobacco whatever, 

 as the leaves turn yellow and fall shortly after the 

 worm has attacked the stem. The tabacco-worm merey, 

 attacks tee root. The large plantations of Maslak, which 

 are celebrated for their excellent produce, have been 

 nearly all destroyed this year by the wire-worm, while in 

 other districts the tobacco-worm has done much damaing 

 — Nature. 



New Products and our Handbook — A pbmter 

 ina district at a medium elevation writes : — "Even 

 your elaborate table of 17 columns does not satisfy 

 estate requirements at the present time. I have 

 filled in the columns approximately, but I would 

 be sorry to ' bet a sixpence ' on their correctness 

 even with this reservation. The total acreage, one can 

 swear to, but when yon ask for details, yon are giving 

 us a regular puzzle which I am not inclined to handle. 

 On the last mentioned estate (above) 6 products are 

 mentioned, but there are more though not in quantity, 

 such as Liberian coffee, yams, sappan wood (3 bushels 

 seed planted), coconuts and Indiarubber. I am 

 thinking of applying to Government for a grant-in- 

 aid, and to offer to open the place to the public as a 

 garden. I believe it would pay both parties, especially 

 the proprietors." 



Emancipation in Brazil — The Emperor of Brazil, 

 in his speech from the Throne on the Sth March spoke 

 as follows respecting the abolition of slavery in 

 Brazil :— The present extraordinary session has been 

 decided upon through the necessity of resolving on 

 measures regarding the Government Bill that had 

 been framed for the purpose of gradually abolishing 

 slavery in our country, in consonance with the wishes 

 of all Brazilians and in such a manner as to call for 

 the least possible sacrifice and to cause the least 

 embarrassment to the productive power of the country. 

 You will certainly respond to that need with the 

 greatest concern. In your wisdom you will moreover 

 acknowledge that it is of the utmost importance to 

 devise means that shall insure that tranquility in the 

 country which is necessary in order that the substitution 

 of the slavery element should be fully completed. 

 — London Times. 



