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ching, a fall was expected, this expectation being the more justified be- 

 cause at first the news with regard to the yield of the summer crop 

 was entirely favourable. At the beginning of September the quotation 

 was cJ/ 52. — per 50 kilos, with a firm tendency; and it is stated 

 that this price has been determined not so much by an unfavourable 

 result of the harvest as by the fact that a large number of native traders 

 are now trying to cover open sales made by them. The visible stock in 

 London on 31 st August was about 40000 bales, compared with about 

 50000 bales on the same date of last year. In the course of the past 

 2 or 3 months the market has slowly but steadily advanced, for whereas 

 at the time of our April Report prices were still round about 5 d., they 

 have now gone up to 5 ; 7-a d. to 5 7 /s d., with a firm tendency. 



The prices of clove oil have not always fully responded to the rising 

 market of the raw material, probably because most distillers had laid in 

 their requirements of material in good time, and also because the demand 

 for the oil occasionally left much to be desired. The prices of clove 

 stalks remain out of proportion high, owing to reasons referred to in 

 previous Reports. No quantities of any importance have been offered at 

 all, everything which has been brought to market having apparently been 

 used to cover sales for delivery which had been made at an earlier period. 



The imports in the first half year of 1910 via Hamburg amounted to 

 686800 kilos against 834900 kilos in the corresponding period of 1909. 



From a paper by Mr. R. N. Lyne, director of Agriculture in Zanzibar, 

 recently read before the Congress of Tropical Agriculture in Brussels, we 

 take a few historical particulars which will probably be of interest to 

 many of our readers. According to Mr. Lyne, the first cloves were brought 

 by Arabs to Zanzibar and Pemba from the Moluccas, via Reunion, in the 

 year 1808, but many years elapsed before it was recognised that the 

 Zanzibar district of Africa was specially suitable for the culture of cloves. 

 In 1860 the British Consul estimated the total yield of the Zanzibar and 

 Pemba cultures at 7 million lbs. The year 1871 marked a turning point 

 in the clove industry, inasmuch as England compelled the Sultan of 

 Zanzibar to issue an edict against the slave trade, as a result of which 

 the cost of labour was materially increased. In the same year a typhoon 

 destroyed the whole of the plantations in Zanzibar, Pemba fortunately 

 escaping without damage and being therefore in a position to take the 

 utmost advantage of the increased price of the article. New plantations 

 were immediately laid down in Zanzibar, and in 1895 a crop was gathered 

 amounting to double that of the period preceding the catastrophe. The 

 events of subsequent years, such as the bombardment of Zanzibar in 

 1896, the final abolition of slavery in 1897, and the small-pox epidemic of 

 1898, followed by an exceptional drought, have been unfavourable to the 

 development of the clove industry, which, nevertheless, has recuperated 



