188 SPICES 



CHAP. 



the good buds while stalking. It can be done at this time 

 with little trouble, and with no extra cost, but the invariable 

 custom is to let good and bad all go in together. Before finally 

 sending to market we passed the cloves through a riddle, to 

 remove the small immature buds. By these means, which is 

 only the old story of attention to detail, we produced what, for 

 Zanzibar, was a fairly good sample, though falling short in the 

 size of the buds. This was a defect which we could not remedy ; 

 most of the cloves this year have been small. 



Practically no difference is made in the local market 

 between good and ordinary, so I was induced to send a small 

 trial lot of 140 fraslas to be sold separately in London, to test 

 the value of our work. Early in the year I had sent home to 

 Messrs. Gray, Daws, and Co. an experimental sample of cloves 

 that had been dried last season, and Mr. Hugh Garden of that 

 firm reported on them as follows : 



" As regards the cloves this is, of course, the finest sample 

 of Zanzibar ever shown, and buyers who saw it valued it at 

 7d. to 8d. There is still a considerable difference between this 

 and Penang, which somehow appear to retain their reddish 

 brown colour. A very fine sample was bought in at auction 

 at lid. or ll^d., and was being held for Is. The market 

 apparently makes the same difference between Penang and 

 your sample in value as between your sample and ordinary 

 fair Zanzibar, but this, too, you must understand, is only for 

 very limited quantities." 



These cloves were dried under glass after having been 

 specially picked. More depends upon the picking than upon 

 the drying. It is impossible for us here to pick the buds 

 singly, because of the quantity to handle ; they must be picked 

 in bunches, as they grow, and the small and over-ripe buds 

 sorted out afterwards. In order to test the efficacy of glass 

 we erected a small house 30 ft. long and 14 ft. wide, with 

 galvanised iron walls and a glass roof. The heat of the sun 

 was in this way increased 25 beyond what it was in the open 

 air. This increase of temperature did not hasten the drying 

 process so much as we expected, unless the cloves were first 

 raised upon shelves. The heated air was then able to act from 

 below and above, and cloves could be dried in two days in 

 cloudy weather with only short intervals of sunshine. All 

 our cloves were finished off in the glass-house. I don't think 

 that the elevated temperature to which they were exposed 

 contributed so much to the improvement in quality as the 

 sorting and riddling. We shall try and arrange next year a 

 system of shelves to increase the drying area of the clove house. 



