102 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [September 2, 1889. 
of sulphur, aud by dressing the shoots all over, before 
commencing forcing, with soap water and sulphur ; 
three ounces of so tt soap to a gallon of wapmwaier, 
Weil beat up, adding tour handfuls of sulphur, will 
make a mixture, which, brushed into every cievice, 
will extirpate both scale and spider. Sulphur, however 
should be used on the pipes during the growing season. 
I11 Sicily, we see from a paper in the Tropical 
Agriculturist of January 18c5, tbe fig is propagated 
from the suckers that spring up from the roots, 
cuttings from the tree being also used. 
<s> 
CEMENT GONCBETE TAPER PIPE SLUICES. 
Air. A. Murray, Provincial Assistant, P. W. D., has 
designed for the North-Central Province village tanks, 
cement concrete pipes, which are likely to afford an 
enormous saving to Government, as these sluices will 
cost about 1-bOth of the iron pipe sluices hitherto 
put in. Mr. Murray's invention is the application of 
cement concrete to the manufacture of taper pipes 
and the design of a junction block to secure an 
efficient union between the vertical and hori- 
zontal sections. The whole arrangement is so simple 
that any villager can put in his own sluice, and all 
perishable material such as iron &c. is entirely 
done away with. The regulation of water supply 
is effected by insertion or removal of the pipes 
forming the vertical section as the water rises or 
abates. Messrs. Nock and T. C. Owen (both of 
whom were lately in the N.-C. Province) saw three of 
these sluices in full working order and were favourably 
impressed with .them. The main features of the 
design are simplicity, cheapness and portability. 
Several have been fixed in position, without the 
aid of skilled labour, and are working admirably. 
Instead of sluicing SO village tanks per annum the 
P. W. 0. wiii now be able to sluice 300 and at 
1-ciOih the cost per tank ! 'ibis application to 
agriculture of a substance so valuable in structural 
operations is likely to produce results little short 
01 a revolution in the rice-growing industry. 
PLANTING IN NORTHERN QUEENSLAND. 
[By a Wandering Ceylon Planter.] 
After some eight or nine years of wandering in the 
Australasian colonies I write you as if writing " t' the 
auiu house at hame," but hrst hud enclosed order to 
iol ward me tbe Tropical Agriculturist. Since coming 
down here I have hau rather a rough wandering time 
through tne interior as also on tne coast, east aud 
west, and have been employed at any ur all under- 
takings that came iu the way, and the oihtr week 
only I came here on a six months' engagement, 
(having travelled overland on horseback some seven 
hundred miles to take a six months' engagement,) 
just to get my hana aud heart into coffee, cacao, &c, to 
which the proprietors are to give a full and faithful 
trial. So you will see i am into propagating in all 
its stages, even my pet work from leaves, if 1 can get 
nothing better, i wrote my last employers in Ceylon 
to see if they could assist me to have some seeds 
forwarded (lor my employers; as also get informa- 
tion as to charges. If 1 am successlul, no doubt, 
you will hear from me now and again. I wish we 
had Ceylon people to get on with here. Australia 
would be another country from what it is. 
Ibis "liicton" is a hue estate oi over 1,000 acres 
of dense jungle, impassable without a scrub knife 
lor pnckiy ci coping vines, which small animals can- 
not gel through. There are also very fine timber trees 
ol hard woodn aud cedar, and as yet there are only about 
40 acres in cultivation with orange, lime, lemon, 
custardapple, boursop, pineapple, guava, peach, 
plums (ol sorts) ; a native plum about the size of a 
.arge Sinhalese fowl's egg. and of a deep plum colour 
ealbd Davidsunii and a jasmine plum of very fine 
flavour ; there are also native cherry, tbe blanches 
weighed to the ground with crop. Mangoes grow very 
fine and rapidly in the jungles; bananas reach some 
60 feet high, the Cavendish variety we cultivate only. 
There are several other things, ginger, a> row root, to- 
bacco, maize, &c, &c, but prices are so low that they 
deem fruit cultivation for the markets do not pay. 
Our labour is of a very poor tort, a handful of Kana- 
kas and about 60 natives ; the latter only get their 
food and now and then ; clothes as they are required ; 
theyare untrained, untamed and quite wild cannibals at 
the best ; but, as far as I have seen of them, they have 
been quiet, peaceable, but not industrious. Yet I 
would believe in course of time the children will 
become more tractable as civilization goes on. If 
any of these native fruits you have not got let me 
know and I would forward you a small parcel by 
the B. I. S. N. Company's steamer for you. Do you 
know, if there could be got through the agents, that 
these steamers would bring a case of cuttings, and 
germinated seeds, as deck cargo or keep them so they 
could get plenty of air ? I brought on horseback two 
sacks of such for over three weeks and through a dry 
time, they were Bamba's Malay apple, cashewnut and 
a lot of other things, and after their long perishing 
they have rooted and growing vigorously. If they 
would bring them I would send an order and cash 
with instructions how they should be packed. 
Peasant Proprietorship in Brittany — The 
British Consul at Brest, in his last report, refers to 
the condition of the Breton peasant proprietor, and 
says that although he has a great natural aptitude for 
tilling the soil he labours under considerable disad- 
vantages. Asamle, he cannot furnish himself with 
the proper plant, cattle, and implements for agriculture 
and, above all, bear the expense of draining. Nearly 
all the land cultivated by the peasant proprietor is 
worked with the spade, and the fear of losing, or even 
risking, the slender profit he is able to make by bis 
severe labours effectually prevents any enterprise and 
engenders a spirit of avarice difficult to describe. The 
peasantry apparently live in a condition ol squalor, 
happily unknown to the English agricultural labourer. 
Thanks, however, to their extraordinary parsimony, it 
is perhaps doubtful if they are actually as poor as they 
seem ; but their pale and troubled faces and bent forms, 
even in early life, show how badly they are fed, whether 
they can afford comfort or not. In' Brittany, certainly, 
under the peasant proprietorship system, the land is 
not properly worked and much goes out of cultivation. 
It is the custom to raise immense banks as hedges be- 
tween their little plots, to grow scrub oak on. These 
banks, with their huge crest of scrub, shade the land to 
a great distance on each side, and from the resulting 
damp little or nil grow under them. The object is to 
obtain the firewood, which is of very slow growth, and 
the peasant in thus trying to get too much out of his 
plot, is half-starved, whilst half-killing himself with 
labour. Many other instances could be presented of 
the same shortsightedness in squeezing the land. 
Men and women indiscriminately perform the work 
of the agricultural animals they cannot afford to 
buy, with the usual consequent evils to health. 
It is no uncommon sight to see women working 
with the flail for hours, a labour so severe that 
it often breaks down the men. — London Times. 
[There are two principles to be kept in view if the most 
is to be made of the land. Let it be the indefeasible 
property of the cultivator, but let that cultivator pos- 
sess a sufficient area for the employment of capital, 
which he ought to possess to some extent, and labour. 
Peasant proprietorship of small holdings sounds well, 
but the results, even where, as in France, the utmost 
industry and thrift are exercised, are the reverse of 
satisfactory : industry degenerating into depressint 
slavery, and thrift passing into sordid poverty and 
blighted existence. In this as in other matters the 
co-operation of capital and labour are required to bring 
out the best results.— Ed.] 
