and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— December, 1911. 571 



vince of Ceylon. [There ought to be a good 

 portrait of this most persevering planter, excel- 

 lent man, and interesting historic personage, in 

 the Hall of the Planters' Association, Kandy.] 

 To turn to practical items of the day, the new 

 Duckwari Factory is well on towards comple- 

 tion. It will be remembered that the old 

 Factory (a converted coffee store) was acci- 

 dentally destroyed by fire, recently ; and now 

 its successor is to be a credit to its de- 

 signers and builders, and a great advant- 

 age to all interested in its working and 

 the products prepared in it for shipment. It 

 was a disappointment to us to have no 

 time on this occasion to run over the adja- 

 cent estates and get a proper idea of the 

 Eangala district as a whole, and some 

 notion of Nitre Cave and revive associations 

 with old Medamahanuwara, Better luck next 

 time ! The run back to Teldeniya, and up 

 to the turn of the road into and through 

 Dumbara (with reminiscent thoughts of such 

 friends — nearly all deceased — as Tytler, Sout- 

 tar, " Ned " Mortimer, John Brown, Black- 

 law, Watson, Greig, Vollar and Forsyth) 

 the crossing of that fertile valley, the passage of 

 the new iron bridge over the Mahaweliganga, 

 and then on up to Kandy, was very enjoyable, 

 and crowned a notable day for us in not the least 

 important of the Northern Planting Districts. 



CULTIVATION OF IPECACUANHA 

 IN INDIA. 



Attractive for many years to British experi- 

 mentalists in plant cultivation for materia 

 medica has been the idea of growing ipeca- 

 cuanha in British India, and just now, when 

 for two years we have seen the root from South 

 America fetching high prices on the London 

 market, users have naturally enquired whether 

 our great Eastern Empire could not afford us 

 some relief. As a matter of fact, the efforts of 

 the scientific cultivator have been directed to 

 this question for many years, but we fear, with 

 but moderate success. The late Dr. Anderson, 

 superintendent of the Royal Botanic Gardens, 

 near Calcutta, first conceived the possibility of 

 growing ipecac, for commercial purposes in 

 India. Dr. King brought the first plants to 

 Calcutta in 1866, but despite every care they did 

 not flourish. Plants sent to the Kungbi planta- 

 tions, near Darjeeling, did better, and by 1873 

 there were several thousand young plants in 

 Sikkim and district. Somewhere about this time 

 the Bombay Government sought consignment of 

 the plants for cultivation at the cinchona plant- 

 ations at Mahabaleshwar. The earlier work was 

 confined to getting a large stock of plants for 

 experimenting purposes, and a stimulus was 

 given to the cultivation by the discovery that 

 the plants, unlike most others, can be propa- 

 gated freely by root cuttings. The plant re- 

 quires a thoroughly tropical climate— that is, a 

 fairly equal day and night temperature. In the 

 Government teak plantations at Nilarabur, in 

 the Madras Presidency, some measure of success 

 was early obtained. The position in 1902, as 

 defined by Sir George Watt in a special hand- 

 book, seem to have been that, with tho excep- 

 tion of the locality in South India mentioned 



above, no other district had been shown to 

 afford the hope that it can become an important 

 commercial producer. There were, he added, 

 doubtless many other similar regions where it 

 might be grown. The plant grows slowly, and 

 has little in it to attract the attention of the 

 cultivator, so that it may be doubted when 

 private effort may be expected to relieve the 

 Government of its present endeavours. Lately 

 reported as in transit for the London market 

 were a few bales described as from the Bengal 

 Government's cinchona plantations, and Mr 

 David Hooper, writing to us in this connection, 

 suggests that the sort referred to must be 

 Johore, but adding the following information as 

 to the general status of Indian ipecacuanha as a 

 commercial commodity : — 



" I have recently been to the Bengal Govern- 

 ment cinchona plantations in the Darjeeling 

 district, and saw the ipecacuanha growing there. 

 It thrives well under a light shade below the 

 gardens at an altitude of 1,500 ft. There are 

 about four or five thousand plants looking in 

 good condition ; they belong to the original 

 stock introduced some years ago. At the 

 Mungpir nurseries (3,800 ft.) there are several 

 hundreds of cuttinss ready for distribution ; 

 none of the roots, however, have been collected 

 and sent to the London market. In the Madras 

 Government cinchona plantations ipecacuanha 

 has been grown experimentally at various eleva- 

 tions for a long time, but I have seen no notice 

 in the annual reports of the drug being col- 

 lected commercially. I think the root you re- 

 fer to must be from Johore. I wish it could be 

 grown on a large scale in British India." 



It is, however, a fact that from time to time 

 plantations of ipecac, in India have been up- 

 rooted and the produce sold in England. Still 

 the conclusion on the whole seems to be that 

 Indian ipecacuanha is till in an experimental 

 stage, and, moreover, when it emerges therefrom 

 if ever, it will remain for proof whether the 

 medicinal properties are preserved in the Indian 

 cultivated stock. — B. & C. Druggist, Nov. 10. 



THE CONDITIONS BEST SUITED TO 

 EUCALYPTUS TREES. 



The native home of the valuable eucalypts 

 is in the warmer portion of Australia and a few 

 of the adjoining islands. The question of hardi= 

 ness to frost is of paramount importance to the 

 growing of Eucalyptus in the continental United 

 States, because the range of the tree is there de- 

 termined by its ability to cold. In Hawaii, how- 

 ever, the question of frost hardiness is not of great 

 consequence because, outside of the summits of 

 the three highest mountains in the islands, the 

 temperature everywhere in the territory is suffi- 

 ciently high for the growing of Eucalyptus. 



Several species of eucalypts have been planted 

 within the last three years on the west slope of 

 Haleakala, on the island of Maui, at an eleva- 

 tion of between 6,000 and 6,500 feet, and a num- 

 ber of them are doing very well, notably the 

 peppermint gum (E. amygdalina), the blue gum 

 (E. globulus^, the mountain ash (E. siberiana) 

 and the broad-leaved iron-bark {E. siderophoha). 

 Here the temperature is almost never lower 



