109 



TUE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[August i, 1885. 



Darjeeling Tea.— There is little doubt but the 

 quality of tea made in the hills thia year is better 

 than np to the same date last eeason, but oue must 

 always take the opinions of Calcutta experts cum 

 grmio aalis, as they always report more favourably 

 on the (lualily of samples when the market is rising, as is 

 the case this year; and besides, sad to say, experts are not 

 quite infallible. — Darjeeling Cor., Indian Planters' Gazette. 

 The New Tea Evaporator. — A correspondent from 

 Assam writes us that he was the first person to intro- 

 duce, or at any rate use, anything of this kind in 

 Assam. Hesajs he made one himself from designs 

 which he saw in the Scientific American, but he 

 attached a fan to the far end, so as to draw the 

 heat through the tea. At this time the Evaporator 

 had not been thought of in America for tea, but only 

 for dessioating fruit and the like ; and our correspond- 

 ent thinks that some one who knew the experiment 

 he had made as to adapting the Evaporator for tea 

 has appropriated his ideas. Our correspondent says, 

 however, that he only used the Evaporator for final 

 firing, for which it answered very well, burning either 

 coke or charcoal, and with less than 3 maunds of the 

 latter he could finish 20 to 30 maunds of tea a day. 

 He does not believe the American Evaporator will 

 answer ior first firing. — Indian Tea Gazette. 



Reform op London Tea Sales.— The manner 

 in which the tea sales are conducted has caused 

 much dissatisfaction for some time past, for the reasons 

 given last week, and a private meeting of a few of the 

 aggrieved brokers has recently been held to discuss the 

 subject. In fact, this question is in many respects 

 even of more importance to the buying brokers than to 

 the dealers, as is shown by the meeting referred to. 

 The present system cnlmiuated last week in the pur- 

 chase of an entire catalogue of congous by one broker, 

 a circumstance which, of course, attracted the serious 

 attention of other brokers, many of whom were anxious 

 to buy at the sale. What took place at the meeting of 

 brokers which this occurrence led to has of course not 

 been published in detail, but one of the leading Arms 

 of brokers this week announced a slight alteration in 

 the terms on which they would offer tea. Hitherto, 

 the buyer of one lot has had the option of taking the 

 following lot, even when he was not the first lidder of 

 the price at which it was sold. Under the system of 

 ofifering entire parcels in one lot, thia has increased the 

 tendency to give a monopoly to a few buyers at public 

 sale. The change announced thia week was that the 

 "last year" should not have the succeeding lot 

 knocked down to him at the sale, unless he was the 

 first to bid the price at which it was sold. This does 

 not meet the difficulty that when a parcel of common 

 tea is offered at the sale there is a simultaneous and 

 deafening shout of the same price Irom seven or eight 

 people. In this case the "last buyer" would still 

 claim to have the lot knocked down to him. Further, 

 the firm of brokers in question propose to withdraw 

 the remaining privilege of the "last buyer" in case 

 the latter buys more than two lots in succession. This 

 will, in some degree, reduce the advantage enjoyed by 

 the buyers of a previous lot, and may thus be a sight 

 palliative to the evils of the present system, but it is 

 not backed up by a general agreement, so that it is 

 simply an arrangement made by an individual firm 

 who hold some of the most important China tea sales. 

 No alteration, short of the sub-division of parcels into 

 lots of 25 or 50 packages, can replace the ])ublic sales 

 of tea on a proper basis. Without this sub-division 

 there cannot be effic'ent and frre competition, pur- 

 chases must tend to drift into a few hands, and im- 

 porters, brokers, and dealers alike muse in time sutler 

 from the creation of a buying monopoly. Apart from 

 this question the great disorder which prevails in the 

 public sale-rooms certainly calls for immediate reform. 

 —Produce Markets' Jicview, May 23rd. 



FiNANciL Cbisis IN BRAZIL.— Customi, almost the 

 only source of revenue in Brazil, had fallen off greatly 

 under au almost prohibitive import tarift". The pos- 

 ition of commerce and finance may be judged by the 

 following extract from jjroceedings of Parliament, reported 

 in the Bi<j Neivs : — In the Senate, Sr. Correia read an ex- 

 tract from the Diario do Brazil from which it appears 

 that one of our principal banks will shortly commence 

 its liquidation and that 200 commercial houses here 

 are bankrupt. The Senator then referred to the in- 

 creased charge on the Treasury through the lower 

 rate of exchange and wished to know what was the 

 floating debt, iucluiling that to the savings banks. 



Insect Pe.its. — From Bucharest it it .announc- 

 ed that locusts have invaded the Dobrudscha in 

 such quantities that the military have been sent out 

 to destroy them. We have plenty of plagues here in 

 England, but, thank goodness, our English pests do not 

 do things on such a magnificent scale as the Dobrudscha 

 locusts. If our peaceful countrymen were to read 

 something like the following in their daily paper, they 

 would think the editor, stafi' and compositors were all 

 under the spell of madness : — 



"The common or garden-slug has appeared in such 

 numbers in Hyde-park, that the Guards are under 

 orders to commence a campaign against them." 



" Rata having infested the banks of the Thames in 

 such numbers, the Channel Fleet has been ordered to 

 Moulsey to bombard the banks." 



" The Government purposes calling out Her Majesty's 

 Reserve Forces to wage war agaiust the army of 

 c ickroaches which has seiz<:d upon the Tower and the 

 Houses of Parliament." — Weekly Lclio. 



Flax Firre. — Attention is being given in the United 

 States to flax fibre as a material for paper making. In 

 southern Dakota flax is grown for the seed, the fibre 

 going mainly to waste. Last year 1,000,000 bushels 

 of flax seed were sent out of the territory. The fibre 

 is sold for $2 to $2 50 per ton, a price that would 

 seem to offer an opportunity for a paper manufactur. 

 ing experiment. It is slated that the proprietors of 

 the London Telegraph, who own a large paper mill at 

 Dartford, England, have purchased a large tract of 

 railroad land in the Mojave Desert for the purpose 

 of using the yucca plant which grows on it for the 

 manufacture of paper. The plant will be ground in- 

 to pulp at a point on the Colorado river, and shipped 

 by rail to New Orleans, thence by sea to Liverpool. 

 Apropos of paper making from moss, the Pensacola 

 Commercial says that the moss crop of Florida is 

 worth more than the cotton, and can be put on the 

 market at less expense. The demand exceeds the supply, 

 and there is not a county in the State in which this 

 product is not going to waste. — P. T. Journal. 



Results op Gold Mining in Mysore and Australia. 

 — Captain Plummer indulges in no prediction, but 

 there is a tone of confidence in the outlook of the 

 mines that he is exploiting, which should be encourag- 

 ing to shareholders in his Company, and should stimul- 

 ate the enterprize of other companies on the Mysore 

 field. It will be observed that ttie assay of the stone 

 at 173 feet level gave 2 oz. 10 dwt. 22 gr. per 

 ton ; at 233 feet it gave 3 oz. 1 dwt. 6 gr. to 4 

 cz. 1 dwt. gr. ; and at 23G feet 7 oz. IS dwt. 

 10 gr. to 9 oz. 1 dwt. 7 gr. The deeper the 

 shaft is sunk the better is the result, and 

 at the lowermost point, "very rich stone" has 

 been found. The depths of the shafts are particularly 

 noticeable. Here is Captain Plummer at Mysore 

 winning S to 9 oz. of gold per ton of quartz at a 

 depth of only 236 feet, while at Sandhurst, the shafts 

 go down as deep as l,7liO feet, and a return of 673 

 oz. of gold from 628 tons of stone, or but little more 

 than 1 oz. per ton, is characterised fks a "grand 

 yield." — Madras Mail. 



