i84 
THP TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [September 2, 1889, 
to ascertain for themselves. If this information is 
not always available at the time the teas are 
printed, it oould be given out in the room. 
There is another point to which I wish to draw 
planters' attention, and that is the marking of the 
packages for local sole:— To avoid marking packages 
"London," as it is does not necessarily fol- 
low that the tea goes there. Certain teas came 
under my notice today which were marked "London" 
on two sides and on the other two with the 
estate name etc. As the tea is being shipped to 
quite another part of the world, it necessitated 
the word " London " being either obliterated or 
erased, which does not add to the neatness of 
the package. The following is all the estate 
marking necessary : anything additional is waste 
of ink, time and labour: — 
(Chest) No— (left-hand corner) 
(Estate) name (omitting the word " Estate") 
(The first letters of the grade thus) 
B. P. (for broken pekoe) 
nett lbs; 
and under the letters " B. P." the words 
" bulked" if it is so. Do not mark on more than 
one side of the package, say the end. 
When packages are covered with marking it _ is 
difficult to find a clear place to put a shipping 
mark. 
Messrs. I. A. Eucker & Bencraft must be ratner 
tired of writing so often on the subject of marking 
packages, but they like myself see that it is 
necessary, which is the only reason I have for again 
referring to the matter. 
Apologizing for taking up so much of your 
valuable space for such, apparently, trivial matters, 
Yours faithfully, F. F. STREET. 
Specimen of Marking. 
No. 100 
Blair Avon 
B. P. 
Bulked 
Nett 50 lb. 
THE SCRAPING OF CINNAMON CHIPS. 
Golua Pokuna. Negombo, 22nd July 1889. 
Dear Sik, — In my remarks at the opening of 
the meeting in cinnamon chips, I am made to say 
that the annual export of cassia chips from China 
is about 3,000,000 lb.; this should be 13,000,000 lb. 
Kindly please make this correction in your Overland 
issue. 
I should have stated to the meeting that in a 
conversation with him in the hall Mr. Jacob de 
Mel who had in his letter to me stipulated for 
permission to scrape chips for conversion into- 
oil, in a very liberal and generous spirit withdrew 
that objection, and assured me that if he con- 
tinued the proportion of cinnamon bark oil he 
would buy chips for the purpose in the local 
market. No doubt Mr. de Mel's brothers are of the 
same mind in this matter ; and it is to be hoped 
that any who are holding aloof from this movement 
will be stimulated by this public-spirited example 
to come forward and join it. — Yours truly, 
WILLIAM JARDINE. 
HOW TO USE A HYGROMETER. 
July 26th, 1889. 
Dear Sir, — Can you or any of your readers tell 
me how to use a hygrometer ?— Yours truly. K. 
f If the hygrometer your correspondent " K." refers 
to "is of the usual type (dry — and wet-bulb thermo- 
meters) the following remarks [will apply ;— 
The instrument must bo placed where direct sun- 
shine or other disturbing sources of heat cannot 
affect it. The air must play freely around it, but it 
must be sheltered from wind and rain. The wet- 
bulb must be covered with a single thickness of fine 
linen or muslin, which should be in contact with the 
greater part of the bulb, not gathered up into few 
more than necessary. The water glass must be 
filled with clear distilled or rain water. At old 
strands of darning cotton should be tied round the 
muslin at the neck of the bulb, and their ends 
should dip into the water in the glass. The bulbs 
will then be kept moist by the capillary action 
of the cotton wick and muslin. It should not 
be wet ; if it is found that the water is supplied 
too freely, the number of threads in the wick 
must be reduced, or the water-glass lowered. 
If, on the other hand, the water does not rise 
sufficiently to keep the bulb constantly moist in 
the driest weather, the wick must be added to, 
and the water-vessel raised. The muslin and wick 
should be renewed before they get dirty, and should 
be boiled before use. The dry-bulb must be kept 
clean and dry. The temperature of the dry-bulb 
and the difference of temperature between the dry 
and wet bulbs are the arguments with which to 
enter the tables of " Relative Humidity " &c. which 
are always used in connection with this type of 
instrument. — A. E. W.] 
Tea in the Luckimpore District : Wonder- 
ful Returns. — We call attention to the report 
of proceedings in connection with the Jokai 
(Luckimpore) Tea Company in another column. 
Mr. Berry White's estimates of the cost at 
which tea can be produced in this Luckimpore 
district, " the natural home of the tea plant " 
are astounding. If perfectly reliable, which we 
suppose they are, we suspect Ceylon must take a 
very secondary place after Luckimpore. But the 
district referred to is exceptional, — by far the most 
favoured scene of tea cultivation in India, perhaps 
in the world. In the large majority of the other 
Indian districts, the figures for production are 
quite double those adduced. If, as Mr. Berry 
White, with his well-known love for his neighbours, 
so magnanimously suggested Ceylon planters will 
have to supersede tea by other plants, a great 
many Indian planters will have to follow suit or 
shut up. If after all, some readers regard Mr. 
Berry White's utterances are somewhat gaseous, 
we can scarcely wonder. 
Podophyllin in the Himalatas.— The Lahore 
paper writes : — " Dr. George Watt, c.i.e., has made 
a discovery which seems likely to provide the hill 
tribes of the higher Himalaya with a lucrative 
trade, and to supply the medical profession with 
an abundance of podophyllin, a drug which, as 
many Anglo-Indians have good reason to know, is 
a valuable specific in disorders of the liver. Hitherto 
America has enjoyed a monopoly of the podophyllin 
plant (podophyllum peltatum), but the researches of 
Dr. Watt and the analysis by Dr. Hooper, Quino- 
logist to the Madras Government, demonstrate that 
the Himalayan variety (podophyllum Emodi) yield 
three times as much of the valuable resin as the 
American root, and that it possesses the same 
medicinal properties. This valuable plant grows 
wild in the higher, rich and shady temperate forests 
from Sikkim to Simla, Kashmir, Hazara Tibet, the 
Kuram Valley and Afghanistan. It is fairly plentiful 
on the northern forest-clad slope of the familiar 
Shalai hill, seen from Simla ; on the almost equally 
well-known Nagkanda hill, and in the Chumba 
State there are many mixed forests with their glades 
almost exclusively covered with this peony-rose like 
herb. In his notes on the subject Dr. Watt re- 
marks that it is surprising that the natives of India, 
who have discovered so many drugs, should have 
failed to detect the properties of the podophyllum 
root." — Pioneer. 
