Pepper.] O"* [March 6, 



VI. 



Commercial Value of Eucalypti in Algeria and Tunisia. 



The retail price of Eu. globulus, much the most 

 Pecuniary profit abundant among eucalypti in Algeria, ^vhen cut up 

 fi-oin tiie trees for fuel and sold in Algiers is $0.50 a quintal (100 

 genera y. kilogrammes = 220 pounds), and yet we have been 



offered by the trade for full-grown trees the same 

 sum, all expenses of cutting down, sawing and splitting into hearth -logs, 

 as well as of carting to town being assumed by the buyer.* The road 

 to town is good, down hill and only four miles long, and the cost of 

 transportation is estimated at about ten cents a quintal. If the road to 

 market is not very short and good, the trade will not hnj standing 

 eucalypti at any price, as there is no profit, and frequently a positive 

 loss in the transaction, and in the immediate proximity to any good 

 market the purchaser has to pay too high a price for his land to grow 

 eucalypti for sale. 



Thus we see that the business scarcely exists at all on any scale worth 

 a longer notice here. And yet firewood is generally wretched in the 

 coast region, good wood being procurable only in the mountains where, 

 with the exception of the several military roads which are admirable, 

 the roads are few and bad. All fuel is therefore relatively dear, because 

 until now no coal mines have been worked, although several are said 

 to exist in the colonies. 



In the towns and even in xllgiers old boxes, rafters from torn-down 



houses and ragged roots of leutiscus areoftered and bought as fire wood. 



Counting 800 trees to the hectare (2 acres 1 rood 35 



Details as to perches) left after ten or twelve years, if the trees are 

 expenses of grow- ^\^q^ marketable (as they rarely are under the most 



ingthe trees, and - , , ■,... , . . ^ , , 



*• . ~ ^^ favorable conditions and circumstances), we have, at 



margin of iirofit ' 



or loss. say 50 cents each, $200 for the product of an hectare 



for ten years, or S20 a year, that is, about $9 a year for 

 the acre. From this sum, if we subtract the cost of growing the trees in 

 the most economical way, which is one-twentieth if the trees are grown 

 from the seed planted in loco (as previously noted), and which may be 

 estimated at $4 a year per acre ; and the interest on the price of the land 

 and other incidental expenses, we find no profit left, or even a pecuniary 

 loss, unless we start with very cheap or free land, most favorably and ex- 

 ceptionally well situated and with 2000 trees per acre, to be weeded out 

 during the first five or six years : and unless we can sell these younger 

 trees, which is a very rare occurrence, the trades preferring other woods 



♦These trees were thirty years old, but uiuler the most favorable couditions the trees 

 would possibly have brought the same i)rice at lil'teen. 



