ii 7 



Imports of Tea for consumption into: — 



United Kingdom United States 



Year. Million pounds. Million pounds. 



1890 ... 194 ... 83 



1 89 1 ... 202 ... 82 



1892 ... 207 ... 90 



1893 ... 208 .. 88 



1894 ... 214 ... 92 



1895 ... 222 ... 96 



1896 ... 228 ... 93 



1897 ••• 2 3 J ••• IX 3 



1898 ... 235 ... 68 



1899 ... 242 ... 73 



1900 ... 250 ... 83 



An interesting feature of the development of the tea trade, so 

 far as the United States is concerned, is the increasing proportion 

 which India and Ceylon supply of the imports into that country. 

 The exports of tea from India to the United States increased from 

 228,000 pounds in 1895 to 1,414,000 pounds in 1899, and those 

 from Ceylon increased from 183,000 pounds in 1895 to 2,060,000 

 pounds in 1 899. Journal of the Society of Arts — August, igoi . 



NOTES ON THE VALUE OP THE INCIDENTAL 

 INCREMENT OP PLANT POOD IN SOILS. 



The value of the incidental increment of plant food in soils 

 covered with certain crops, is hard to estimate. One difficulty has 

 been, that the cultivator who depends solely on analysis of the soil, 

 as a guide to its fertility, has often found a certain amount of 

 available food in his land unaccounted for, i.e., the plant has 

 obtained food in some way which the analysis of the soil did not 

 show. It is a favourite maxim of the Agricultural Chemist since 

 Liebig expounded his mineral theory of manures, that there is so 

 much available plant food in the soil, and if a plant takes up and 

 gses a certain amount of this, that there must be so much left. 

 This has since been modified by Ville and others. While allowing 

 that the basis is one which necessarily must always be a guide to 

 the cultivator, it is known to the experienced that the theory is 

 unsound, and that plants uncultivated or cultivated, as a rule, get 

 more food than could possibly be afforded by the soil alone, the 

 fertility of which may have been determined by careful analysis. 

 In temperate climates the incidental increment of plant food is not 

 so large as in the tropics, where it is an element in cultivation 

 which has to be taken into account by every planter. Soils, which 

 on analysis show themselves to be poor and barren and which 

 would indeed be poor and barren soils in a temperate climate 

 where there is less incidental increment, prove in the tropics to be 

 soils on which excellent crops can be grown, in fact, the soil 

 appears merely to act as a medium for the absorption of food by 



