88 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



the work put under the direction of expert tea 

 growers. Members of the Imperial Domain's 

 staff were sent to China, Japan, India and 

 Ceylon to acquire practical knowledge of tea 

 growing. Experienced growers were also brought 

 out from China, and one of these still remains, 

 as manager of the tea plantations. Tea-growing 

 has now passed beyond the experimental stage. 

 The annual crop averages about two hundred 

 thousand pounds. About twelve hundred acres 

 are devoted to tea culture. The fields are partly 

 on the plains and partly on the low hills, which 

 in some cases have been terraced as a protection 

 against erosion. During the early experimen- 

 tal stages about three thousand tea bushes 

 were planted to the acre. This number has 

 been increased, until as many as four thousand 

 four hundred bushes are now crowded into the 

 acre. The tea plantations are being extended 

 at the rate of about one hundred and thirty-five 

 acres per annum. The leaf is picked four times 

 during the season. The first picking yields 

 the superior quality, although the second is 

 more abundant. The leaf is cured in a modern 

 factory, where every care is taken to obtain 

 cleanliness. The cleaning, curing and packing 

 are all done by machinery, which is mostly 

 English. The sanitary conditions are excel- 

 lent. The Ghakva tea somewhat resembles in 

 taste the teas of Ceylon and India, although 

 it cannot be said as yet to have reached the 

 excellence of the best of these. The Russian 

 tea is sold principally in Poland and Central 

 Asia. Shipments of about one thousand pounds 

 have been sent to America on one or two oc- 

 casions, but no regular demand appears to have 

 followed. — Royal Society of Arts Journal, May 31. 



THE PALM-SAP INDUSTRY OF THE 

 PHILIPPINES. 



The aboriginal Philippine tribes for hundreds 

 of years— probably since long before the advent 

 of white people among them — have made alco- 

 holic drinks from the saps of certain palms, 

 among them the nipa palm, the coconut palm, 

 the sugar palm, and the buri palm. It has long 

 been known that the sugar possibilities of some 

 of these palms merited investigation. In fact, 

 investigations into the sugar possibilities of 

 some of them have been made m past years, 

 notably into the merits of the coco palm in 

 Ceylon and the sugar palm in Java, while sugar 

 is now actually made trom the coco plam by the 

 natives of the Philippines. According to the 

 returns of internal Revenue Bureau of the Phi- 

 lippines, about 93 per cent of the entire output 

 of alcoholic beverages produced in the Philip- 

 pines in 1910 came from the sap of palms, the 

 production noted by the authorities amounting 

 to about 2,062,000 proof gallons. The industry- 

 is greatly on the increase. About twenty-two 

 beverages are manufactured from these saps. As 

 a rule, they are well-known native drinks, or 

 imitations of well-known foreign drinks. The 

 most popular, known as anisette anisado, vino 

 de coco, and vino do nipa, contain 10 to 55 per 

 cent of alcohol. In addition to the above, a vast 

 amount of palm sap is consumed without distil- 



lation. Nevertheless, the production of alcohol 

 from these palm saps is developed to only a 

 fraction of its possibilities. There are not only 

 vast areas of palms suited to the production and 

 accttssible, which are yet untouched, but the 

 cost of production, under even present crude 

 conditions, is small, compared with the cost of 

 producing alcohol from other sources. From the 

 standpoint of alcohol production and of sugar 

 production, tlie principal palm is the nipa palm. 

 The nipa is an erect, ste nless palm, of which 

 the leaves and inflorescence rise from a branched 

 root stock, the leaves running from nine to thirty 

 feet in length. It grows along the tidal marshes 

 of rivers in low, wet lands, subject to overflows 

 of brackish water as the tides rise each day, and 

 it will not thrive where either fresh or sea water 

 alone is available. Nipa swamps of considerable 

 size occur practically throughout the Philip- 

 pines, and, inasmuch as they occur in lands which 

 otherwise are useless or almost without value, 

 the cultivation of nipa palms where they are 

 cultivated, or the presence of nipa trees wild 

 where not cultivated, affords a profitable crop on 

 little original outlay. The sugar-making possibi- 

 lities of these saps, considered commercially, 

 seem to hinge largely upon conditions under 

 which the sap can be gathered and handled. 

 The saps of the three principal sugar-bear- 

 iug palms, the nipa, the coco, and the buri, 

 run remarkably close together in composition. 

 The sap from these trees, as a rule, is obtained 

 through the flower stalk. In the nipa the flower 

 stalk iscut off immediately below the fruit. It is 

 generally tapped the fifth year. Each day a thin 

 slice is cut from the severed stem, to keep the 

 wound fresh and facilitate the flow of sap. The 

 sap is collei;fce^ in bamboo joints hung on the 

 stem, generally having a capacity of about two 

 quarts. One sjalk normally flows about three 

 months, but it is not uncommon for it to be cut 

 entirely away by the thin slices from day to day 

 long before the flow has ceased. In some dis- 

 tricts the plant is cut before the fruit forms, and 

 the flow of sap is increased thereby, so far as 

 daily output is concerned, but the length of the 

 flow is shortened — the total yield of the plant 

 apparently being about the same by either 

 method. The plants are allowed to rest and 

 put forth new fruit stalks, after being thus ex- 

 hausted. How long they continue to bear is un- 

 certain, but all authorities agree that a plant 

 will continue to produce sap for many years, 

 probably for fifty years or more, on an average. 

 The yield of sap also is uncertain, and estimates 

 vary between wide limits. An experienced dis- 

 tiller says that each plant will average about 

 thrae pints daily. The yield and quality of the 

 sap can be improved by seed selection and a 

 measure of cultivation of tbe plant. The sap, as 

 it flows, is clean and almost colourless, and 

 very sweet to the taste. Fermentation com- 

 mences so soon after the sap exudes that many 

 distillers believe that yeast germs are present in 

 the sap ; but the immediate fermentation is ex- 

 plained, to some extent, by the fact that the 

 receptacles for the sap are used over and over 

 again, without cleaning. When the sip is col- 

 lected in clean vessels it undergoes no change for 

 four or five hours. — Royal Society of Arts Jour- 

 nal, May 31. 



