i9o5.] Agricultural Machinery for Sibf:ria. 565 



tropical fruits decay very quickly in their native country is in 

 reality no argument against the suggestion. It only indicates 

 that in their native countries, as in this and every other land, 

 the surface of every ripe fruit is loaded with the spores of fungi 

 wild yeasts, &c., which attack the tissues and set up a fermenta- 

 tion that is often mistaken for the normal decay due to over- 

 ripeness. As an example, the state of semi-decay in which 

 bunches of bananas so frequently reach us is in most instances 

 entirely due to the attacks of various superficial organisms 

 capable of inducing fermentation. This could be prevented by 

 the adoption at the port of shipment of the treatment recom- 

 mended above. 



The Board have received from the Foreign Office a dispatch 

 by Mr. Cooke, British Commercial Agent in Russia, in which it 

 is mentioned that, according to a statement 

 Purchase in the Official Commercial and Industrial 



°M^e&r^"w ^"''"^ (November 3rd), the Agricultural 

 Siberia. Department proposes to purchase abroad 



considerable lots of agricultural machinery 

 to the amount of about a million roubles for the Government 

 depots in Siberia. The foreign machinery supplied, both by 

 the Government and the private depots^ established at all the 

 chief centres in western and central Siberia, is almost exclu- 

 sively American. The exhaustion of stocks during the war, 

 the further interruptions of goods traffic due to return military 

 traffic, and the demand created this year by a plentiful harvest 

 in Siberia, have doubtless necessitated a replenishment of both 

 Government and private supplies. 



The central offices of the Siberian agricultural machinery 

 stores are at Omsk, but American manufacturers have their 

 agents in every town and in most of the central villages. 

 The machines most largely imported are mowers and rakes, 

 reapers and to a smaller extent binders. These are nearly 

 all American. The only British competition, and that hitherto 

 but very slight, is from Canada, and the Canadian machines 

 go by the general name of American. Mr. Cooke thinks 

 that this Canadian competition might be developed. British 

 competition in Russia tends rather to threshers and portable 



