7809, NOTES AND COMMENTS. 245 
Kew 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 Malays, 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 Générale de Botamique, 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 
