474 



(2) It may be possible that the excrement of the mites 

 contains poisonous compounds, which would be 

 injurious, if the powdery excrement were 

 cooked with the rice. 



L. A. B. 



THE CULTIVATED CROTALARIA. 



The Crotalaria now so extensively cultivated as a 

 green-soiling plant in the Malay Peninsula, under the name 

 of Crotalaria striata, Dec, has a very different appearance 

 from the common wild plant so common in Coconut estates 

 and waste sandy places generally near the sea. It is al- 

 together a much stouter plant and much more branched. 

 The leaves are larger and deeper green, and the pods con- 

 tain over forty seeds each instead of the usual twenty- 

 five or thereabouts of our local plant. This cultivated 

 form apparently keeps quite true, and the wild form the 

 true C. striata does not under cultivation along side of it 

 show any signs of turning into the cultivated form. What 

 I have called the cultivated form was obtained from Ceylon, 

 where the true slender C. striata grows also. In Trimen's 

 flora of Ceylon, a variety from Kandy is described under 

 the name of variety acuiifolia with " Leaflets larger acute, 

 pods larger with more numerous seeds." This fits the 

 Ceylon plant as cultivated here except that the leaflets can 

 be hardly said to be acute, but they seem to have a longer 

 mucro or little spike at the end of the leaf, otherwise the 

 description suits the plant. Its stouter and more robust 

 habit and larger foliage make it a very much better plant 

 for cultivation than is the wild plant. It seems too to be 

 less liable to the attacks of the little pea-weevil which often 

 destroys all the seeds in the pods of the wild plant, but of 

 this one cannot yet be certain. 



If not the exact form intended by Dr. Trimen under his 

 var. acuiifolia, it might be termed var. robusta. 



It may be noticed by planters that the bark of the plant 

 peels off very readily and is tough enough to make a good 

 string, and this fibre is used for this purpose by some of the 

 natives of India. 



Ed. 



AN AMERICAN VIEW OF AGRICULTURAL 

 EXHIBITIONS. 



Here and there we meet with people who hold the 

 opinion that the Agri-Horticultural Shows, held so success- 



