April i, iS86,] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



601 



say the least that '• poor coffee " should have 

 (alien otlf in consumption in Britain by nearly 1-lOth 

 lb. per head since the time coffee leaf disease 

 began to work mischief in Ceylon : — 



The following figures, extracted from an annual 

 table compiled by Messrs. Francis Reid it Co. of 

 Liverpool, show the average quantities of the lead- 

 ing artiees of food, etc., consumed in the United King- 

 dom by each head of the population during every 

 few years since 1S50, together with the net amounts 

 of income tax payable over the same period, viz.: — 



■x«X 

 oraoDiii 



£- t- ,-< 



g 8 



■s^i.ndSg.S 2 



OC'-li-Ht-HrtTHO 



fee o 



oaouqox £ 





iC f ■»?' 



•00\ri ^ ^ 



'-''-00c 0000 000 

 r- ^r: ^ -i 3D -X CO -I' <M 00 





•wSug jd 



The " estimated" population was 27,123,000 in 1850; 

 28,ir>4,000 in ISoG ; -iH.'lil.OOO in 1860 ; aO,OtH"),000 in 

 1»G5 ; M1,UM),0<^0 in 1870 ;-i-2,I(X).(XX) in 1875; 34.000,OC>0 

 in 1880 ; 3(),000,000 in 1883 ; and 36,600,000 last year. 



THE MAKING OF BOXES BY MACHINERY. 



A good good deal of opposition has lately been 

 manifested to machine-made boxes, and the public 

 has been invited to boycott goods put up in them. 

 Mr. Geor?e Blair, socialist and box-maker, was 

 lately interrogated on the subject by a New York 

 reporter. The gist- of his remarks is as follows : — 



" About ten years ago there was no such thing 

 as a machine-made box. Nowadays, in some trades, 

 there is no such thing as a hand-made box. 

 Formerly the knocking together of small boxes for 

 soap, oil. etc.. was a trade by itself, at which 

 nearly 500 men in this city made fair wages. The 

 wood was cutout by machinery, and the workmen 

 nailed the pieces together. jX.bout 1871 some man 

 improved considerably upon a machine which ham- 

 mered in at one blow all the nails one side of a 

 box. Since then improvement has followed im- 

 provement until now you pour a keg of nails in at the 

 top of the machine and a boy feeds in the wood at 

 the bottom. All that the boy does is to put in the 

 right pieces and in the proper order, the machine 

 doing all the rest. The machine works so well and 

 so ta«t that the men have been driven out of the 

 business by boys, the price of such work having 

 dwindled until no man can make a living at it. In 

 1873 the Standard Oil Company paid 83 for knocking 

 together 100 boxes. Thanks to the machine, it now 

 gets the same work done fur eleven cents. The 

 work of knocking the boxes together costs less than do 

 the nails used. The boxes I speak of are used to 

 put oil cans in, and may measure 20 inches in 



length, 10 inches in heiglit and 14 inches in width. 

 The Standard Oil Company saves a fortune every 

 year by the use of the.se niathiues, and so it is with 

 soap boxes, some starch boxes, shoe boxes, etc., in 

 tact every sort of box that is made in very largo 

 quantities and of one particular size.— Iniltistrial 

 South, Dec. 1885. 



COLOMBO COMMERCIAL CO., LIMITED. 



The annual Accounts are now presented to Share- 

 holders, viz : Balance Sheet made up to iiOth Septem- 

 ber 1H85, Profit and Loss Account for year ending 

 'MMh September 1885. It will be seen from the 

 Balance Sheet that £11,100 of Debentures have 

 been paid oft during the year, thus for the future 

 effecting a considerable annual saving in Interest ; 

 the Company's Estates also now stand at a cost of 

 some £1,500 less th.an by last account. The other 

 items in the Balance Sheet do not call for special 

 remark. The result of the year's working as shewn 

 by Profit and loss Account, is a profit of £l!"24 

 5s Gd and deducting from this the debit balance 

 brought forward from last year of £223 Os Ud, there 

 remains to the credit of the account £101 4s 7d. 

 The Directors recommend that £370 of the above 

 sum be now applied to the payment of a dividend 

 of 2 per cent, on the Preference Shares for the 

 year ending 30th September last. The above result 

 is regarded as satisfactory by the Board, taking into 

 account that on most of the Estates with which 

 the Company is connected, and generally throughout 

 the Island, a large proportion of the coffee is being 

 supplanted by tea, the latter at present being in 

 most cases too young to give returns, while the 

 coffee crop continues steadily to decrease by reason 

 of lessened area, leaf disease, and bad seasons. An 

 important feature of the past year has been the 

 fall in the price of Silver, which, while cheapen- 

 ing the cost of cultivating and working estates, 

 emphasises the desirability of making addtions to 

 the Exchange Reserve Fund as soon as opportunity 

 offci-s. The items in this year's Profit and Loss 

 Account have been calculated at an Exchange of 

 1/(1 per rupee. For the year now current the 

 outlook as regards coffee is not good ; the pre- 

 sent price is the lowest ; of recent jears, and the 

 crop will be the smallest ever received from Ceylon. 

 The following figures may be found of interest 

 as shewing the falling oft' in the coffee enterprise 

 of the Island. 



Ceylon Coffee, 

 .Shipped for the year ending 30th Sept. 1S75 908,000 cwt. 

 „ „ 1882 564,UIH) ,, 



„ „ l«8:i 2«0,000 „ 



„ „ 1884 323,0(X) „ 



„ „ 1885 314,000 „ 



Estimate „ , 1881! 180,000 „ 



The shrinkage of business which the above figures 

 coupled with low prices denote is enormous, and 

 could not have been faced by the Colony had not 

 new products come to its aid. Amongst these 

 cinchona has proved a most useful adjunct, 

 but owing to large supplies the price of thia 

 product has fallen so low that its cultivation 

 has ceased to be fairly remunerative, except under 

 vei'y favourable conditions. The above crop figures 

 also shew that the volume of business lost thrr."''h 

 the failure of such a stap'.e as coffee nan . ly 

 be replaced by an article of general consumption, 

 and in this respect the product on which the 

 future prosperity of the Island depends has even 

 an advantage over coffee, the consumption of tea 

 being almost universal and the demand for iiood 

 tea practically unlimited. Passing from coffee to tea 

 prospects are distinctly lavoiable. Large areas 

 have been, and are being planted, and are thriv- 



