754 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[May I, 1886. 



having been immersed in a strong 'solution of the tannin 

 extracted from the seed-pods. 



" As to to the commercial or money-value of this 

 substance, the price of sumac being to-day £16 per 

 ton, it would be worth not more than £9 per ton. It 

 will be sufficient to compare its market-value with 

 sumac only. — Thomas Wardle. 



'* j}>'.B. — On further con.sideration I would suggest 

 that the best way of making this product useful would 

 he to extract the tannin from it where it grows, and as 

 probably the bark and even the branches of this acacia 

 may contain more tannin than the seed-pods, all could 

 be boiled down together, and a better average yield of 

 tannin obtained. 



TO W. T. THISKLTON DYER, EC*. 



'* You will observe the amount of tannin is consider- 

 able, being more than that given by balonia, which is 

 generally 2.3 per cent. The color is also very good ; it 

 would not give the same weight as balonia, but I 

 imagine would make a leather more like oak bark. The 

 pods must be gathered ripe so that the seeds may be 

 taken out, as they are (iO per cent of the weight of the 

 pod and contain no tannin. The bark of the babul is 

 also good, about 20 per cent, but it is not so clean, and 

 has a good deal of rough ross, which adds to the cost of 

 freight. Now, as to the probable value, that is another 

 matter: balonia is worth now (good) £17 per ton. But 

 tanners know the value of that, and there is no diffi- 

 culty in disposing of it. But every new material has to 

 run the risk of the market ; it may be at the wharf for 

 months without being looked at, until some prominent 

 man tries it. It should certainly be worth at least £10 

 per ton, but I could not guarantee that price. — W. N. 

 Evans. 



KEW AND ITS WOEK. 



{From the Gardener's Chronicle.) 

 Value oe Vecietablk Products. — Just consider for 

 awhile what a large proportion of the food and clothing 

 of mankind has to be derived from the vegetable king- 

 dom. Last year the value of the agricultural crops 

 grown in Great Britain alone amounted to £130,000,000 

 sterling. The value of the grain and flour imported 

 amounted to £67,000,000 sterling. These two added 

 together amount to over £200,000,000, or £6 per head 

 for epch person in the country. The exports of the 

 United States, mainly grain and flour, amounted last 

 year to 740,000,000 dollars, or nearly £150,000,000 

 sterling. The total exports and imports of India last 

 year amounted to £131,000,000 sterling, and of these 

 materially over £100,000,000 belonged directly to the 

 vegetable kingdom in one form or another. 



Tin; I'ltuue or the .A.ngi,o-Saxon Kica. 

 And consider, also, to what a large extent the future 

 fortunes of the liritish Empire depend upon a proper 

 development of the capabilities of our colonial posses- 

 sions to produce the vegetable crops that are useful 

 to the human race for food, clothing, medicine, and 

 other economic uses. Our population is now 3.50,000,000. 

 What will it be in a hundred years' time -•' Notwith- 

 standing emigration, the population of Great Britain 

 has doubled in the last half century, whilst that of 

 France, that in the seventeenth century amounted to 

 38 per cent of the whole population of Europe, now 

 hardly attains i;j per cent. To 350,000,000 add 

 50,000,000 for the population of the United States, 

 which has increased above 20 per cent during the last 

 ten years. The estimate recently put forward by Mr. 

 Gladstone docs not seem at all an extravagant one, 

 that in a hundred years' time it is not improbable 

 that th» English-speaking race and its subjects will 

 mount up to a population of 1,000,000,000. How all 

 these men and women and children are to be supplied 

 with needful food ami clothing is a problem that will 

 try to the very utmost the knowledge and the fore- 

 sight and tlie energy and the euterpise of the generations 

 that are to follow our own. 



.Vnd think of these tilings, too, from a social and 

 political point of view, side by side with this growth in 

 poiiulatioii anil lljis wonderful revolution that has been 

 brought about by railways Rnd steamships and tele- 



graphs, how we have been growing gradually more 

 and more luxurious in our habits of daily life, and 

 how the spread of education and the popularisation 

 of art ami the enormous increase which has taken 

 place during the last generation in the number of 

 those who possess incomes of moderate competence 

 have increased the quantity and quality of the things 

 which as a nation we consider that we need to enable 

 us to live our daily lives in contentment and comfort, 

 and how that now, more than ever, the mass of the 

 nation will have an influence in making the laws and 

 controlling the great issues of our foreign and colonial 

 policy. 



The Power Man has of Spoiling thb 'W^grld. 



And reflect also upon the melancholy testimony 

 borne by the historic record how through man's greedi- 

 ness, improvidence, and quarrelsomeness many of the 

 countries that supported the great nations of antiquity 

 have been robbed of their natural beauty and fertility. 

 Pass round the basin of the Mediterranean and com- 

 pare t'ne state of things now with what it once was in 

 Persia, in the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, in 

 Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor and Greece, in .Northern 

 Africa, in Cyprus and Sicily, and in a lesser degree 

 in Spain and Italy. Everywhere we find the same sad 

 contrast of wide tracts of country that were once 

 fertile corn-land now changed to sandy deserts and. 

 pestilential marshes, aqueducts, and roads ruineil by 

 neglect and violence, vineyards and Oiive gardens, anil 

 groves of Date Palms ruthlessly destroyed, and mount- 

 ains that were once sheltered by groves of Oak, 

 and Pine, and Chestnut, changed to bare stony ridges, 

 of which the water springs have been dried up, and 

 the grassy sward parched away, and the coating of 

 alluvial soil which the roots of the trees kept in its 

 place carried away by the rain to silt up the rivers and 

 harbours of the lowlands. Contrast the Carthage of 

 Regulus and Scipio Africanus with the Tunis of to- 

 day ; or the Cyprus that was ruled by the Venetians, 

 when the" island maintained a population of 1,000,000, 

 with the Cyprus which was Jhanded over a few years 

 ago by the Turks to the English, when the population 

 had simk to 140,000 ; or the Lebanon of to-day with 

 the Lebanon of Hiram and Solomon ; or the Assyria 

 of to-day with the Nineveh of Jonah, Sennacherib, 

 and Asurbanipal ; or the Babylonian plain as it is now 

 with what it was in the days of Nebuchadnezzar and 

 Belshazzar. We are told by Herodotus, who visited 

 the city seventy years after it was taken by the Aledes 

 and Persians under Darius, that the walls of Babylon 

 formed a square 50 miles in circumference, and that 

 the Babylonian territory supported, not only its own 

 resident population, but also the whole retiime and 

 army of the Persian king for four months in the year, 

 that one of the satraps owned 16,800 horses, and that 

 his dogs were so numerous that four large villages 

 wore excused from all other taxes on condition of 

 supplying them with food. He sa5's that the soil of 

 the Babylonian plain was so fertile, that of AVheat it 

 yielded a return of two or three hundred-fold ; that 

 Millet and Sesamum grew to a great size ; anil that 

 over the whole plain the Date Palm flourished, bearing 

 fruit abundantly. Now for centuries the plain has 

 been a sandy desert, without any regularly settled 

 inhabitants, and the visitor sees only a few Arab tents 

 and frail reed huts, furEishiug an impressive contrast 

 to the ruins of the .great walls and temples, the only 

 trees now a few AVillows and Tam.i risks along the 

 river, and here and there a spiny Acacia scattered 

 over the sand. 



Recent Ch.\,noes. 



About the plants that have been cultivated for many 

 centuries, such as the Vine and the Hop, the cereal 

 grasses and the common fruits and timber trees of 

 the north temperate zone, the farmers, gardeners, and 

 foresters who have been working at them for gener- 

 ations under every phase of growth and every modific- 

 ation of soil and climate know far more about their 

 different varieties and the situations they need in order 

 to be grown successfully, than botanist.<, whcse atten- 

 tion is not concentrated upon tlie plan's which are 

 specially vftliiablo from ao economic point of view. 



