I90 



TROPICAL AGRICULTURE 



very large— a hundredweight of dried spice having been 

 got from a single tree, at other times the produce is very 

 small. In drying, the berries lose a third of their weight. 

 There is not an increasing demand for pimento and during 

 some years the prices are so low that it is found not worth 

 while to harvest the crop. 



Bay Leaves. — From the leaves of the pimento, and an 



allied plant, called botanically Pimenta acris, an essential 



Bay rum. oil is distilled, which, added to rum, makes the well-known 



The bay leaf Bay rum used so extensively in America. In Dominica, 



Dominica, although the spice is not gathered, the leaves of Pi7nejita 



officinalis, and P. acris, are a considerable article of export 



to the United States, and bay oil is also distilled in the 



Island. The leaves are gathered and dried on the floors of 



houses or in large sheds, in which are erected platforms — 



one a few feet above the other — of wattles. The air easily 



passes through and around these platforms, and the leaves 



Baling. become dry in a few days. They are then packed in bales 



weighing from 200 to 250 lbs. each, and shipped to the 



American ports, where they fetch a good price. 



Habitat. 



The Dutch 

 monopoly. 



Oppressive 

 laws, 



done away 

 with by the 

 English. 



Cinnamon. Cinnamomum zeylanicwn. 



Cinnamon is the prepared bark of the young stems of a tree 

 which grows wild in Ceylon, some parts of India, Cochin 

 China, and many of the islands of the Malayan Archipelago. 

 Most of the cinnamon of commerce, however, comes, and has 

 always come from Ceylon, where the Portuguese and after- 

 wards the Dutch, in the seventeenth century, succeeded in 

 making the trade a monopoly. All the operations of the 

 trade were carried out by government officers, and so cruel 

 and oppressive were the laws on the subject that the selling 

 or giving away of even a single stick of cinnamon were made 

 a crime punishable with death. After the English captured 

 Ceylon, in 1796, from its Dutch masters, all these barbarous 



