1893- NOTES AND COMMENTS. 245 



Keiv Bulletin. The methods of the fruit farmers are " antiquated 

 and conservative," they lead an isolated life, and there is no effective 

 interchange of ideas and information on the subject of their industry, 

 nor do they care to learn what is being done in other countries, or 

 might be done in their own. Moreover, the demand for cheap, coarse 

 fruit among the coloured lower orders in Cape Town is a serious 

 check on any desire for improving the output. " So that the grapes 

 are dirt cheap it does not matter to them how dirty they are, nor are 

 they disgusted at seeing the same baskets that carried the grapes 

 into town piled up among the stable manure the cart takes back to 

 the farm in the afternoon." So little is quality thought of that the 

 producer can grow saleable crops from seedling trees fit only for 

 stocks. " Upon the very few enlightened men who grow fruit on 

 European principles, of the best sorts and in the best manner, the 

 stolid indifference of the market and its pernicious ring of half- 

 coloured middlemen reacts with cruel force. They cannot, somehow, 

 reach the educated purchaser who wants fine and clean fruit, at its 

 best maturity, fit for dessert." This is a sad state of things, and, 

 moreover, the Professor tells us, it is the same with fish. " We all 

 have to be content with what suits the Mala3's, dispensed Malay 

 fashion." What a chance for someone, with a little capital and 

 patience, to grow and retail his own fruit, and break this vicious 

 circle of middlemen. According to Mr. William Tuck's report from 

 Grahamstown, the growers are quite as casual in the Eastern 

 Province. 



The seasons on the two sides of the colony are differentiated, 

 much as in India, by the rainfall occurring conversely, the west 

 having its maximum in winter (June to August), while the east has 

 generally two maxima in the warmer months, November or spring 

 rains, and February or autumn rains. These peculiarities are 

 important in fruit-growing, wine, grape, and raisin production being 

 limited to the Western Province, where alone the summer is 

 sufficiently hot and dry for the proper ripening of the fruit. 



Atropin as a Plant Manure. 



In a recent number of the Revue Genevale de Botanique, M. Henry 

 de Varigny describes some experiments on the value of the alkaloid 

 atropin as a plant manure. Goppert (1834) was apparently the first 

 to test the action of alkaloids in general, and atropin in particular, in 

 this connection. He found the result to be the same whether he 

 watered the earth, in which wheat, peas, oats, or cress were sown, 

 with pure water or an infusion of belladonna. The infusion neither 

 accelerated nor retarded germination. 



P. B. Reveil (1865) came to a different conclusion. He used a 

 solution containing a known quantity of the soluble sulphate of 

 atropin, and found that it favoured the germination of barley sown 



