43 



French colony of Reunion, or Bourbon, as it used to be called. To 

 these sources of production must be added intermittent supplies from 

 the Comorin Islands (French), north-west of Madagascar, from Mada- 

 gascar itself, from Fiji, from Ceylon, and from a few West India islands. 

 But the last-named islands supply only small quantities, and as their 

 vanilla is usually of a very inferior quality it may be left out of account 

 in a review of the general market position. 



The lineage of almost all the vanilla now produced in the eastern 

 hemisphere can be traced back to plants of Vanilla planifolia brought 

 to England from Mexico early in the present century, and propagated 

 in the botanical collection cf the Right Hon. Charles Greville in the 

 unromantic neighbourhood of Paddington. From those suburban hot- 

 houses plants were sent to Java and to Reunion, where, after a few un- 

 successful attempts, a valuable industry was established. In an account 

 of the Reunion vanilla culture, published over twenty years ago by M. 

 Deltiel, it is recorded that the vanilla plants introduced into Reunion 

 remained sterile until, about the year 1841, a slave named Albius dis- 

 covered the method of artificial fertilisation of the flowers which has 

 since been practised in the Indian islands. Two years earlier, however, 

 Professor Morren, of Liege, had read a paper referring to the artificial 

 fertilisation of vanilla before the British Association, and Albius may 

 therefore have been a plagiarist, or — what seems more likely — an inde- 

 pendent discoverer of the sec et 



Be this as it may, the vanilla industry in the islands of the Indian 

 ocean is now firmly established, although its profits are precarious. 

 When vanillin was first introduced as a commercial article, now a good 

 many years ago, the planters and others interested in the vanilla trade were 

 much scared at the new competition ; but events have shown that their 

 fears were unfounded, for although the use of vanillin may have pre- 

 vented the consumption of vanilla from assuming such large proportions 

 as it would otherwise have done, it has not in the least proved an ob- 

 stacle to the profitable cultivation of the vanilla plant, and it is notori- 

 ous that the employment of vanilla has greatly increased of late years. 

 It is also noteworthy that vanillin is now lower in price than it has ever 

 been, while fine vanilla realises higher figures than it has done for 

 years. It seems, in fact, that in many instances the commercial pre- 

 paration of a synthetic product, after creating a temporary depression 

 in the market of the natural drug which it is intended to replace, finds 

 a place side by side with the sale of that product, and remains there- 

 after comparatively powerless to affect the commercial position of the 

 natural article. Cumarin and artificial musk are cases in point in addi- 

 tion to vanillin 



The future course of the vanilla market will be largely influenced by 

 the receipts of Reunion (Bourbon) and Seychelles vanilla in the course 

 of the next three months. When the first arrivals of the new vanilla 

 crop came to hand in October, the stocks had fallen to a very low point 

 everywhere. Since then there has been but little chance of accumula- 

 tion owing to the strong demand, but at present the bulk of the crop is 

 coming in, and it remains to be seen whether buyers will be able to ab- 

 sorb it with a rapidity approaching that with which it arrives. The 

 principal stock of vanilla in Europe is usually kept in France, especially 

 at Paris and Bordeaux, where the bulk of the Bourbon crop is received 



