280 
THP TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [October i, 1889 
CINCHONA PEOSPECTS : A VISITOE 
FBOM JAVA. 
Ceylon has a visitor at present from Java in the 
person of Mr. J. Wijinschunk-dom who is in- 
terested to a considerable extent in cinchona, a g 
well as indigo, sugar, and coffee. Our visitor is 
a member of the Soekaboemi Association and 
trusts that one or two representative Ceylon cin- 
chona planters may visit Java this year to de- 
vise means for putting the Cinchona Syndicate 
in working order. The export of bark from 
Java next year he puts at 3,000,000 half- 
kilogrammes, about 3,300,000 lb., averaging fully 4 
per cent or equal to about 6,600,000 lb. of the 
average quality of Ceylon bark. Mr. Dom is sur- 
prised to find that so little is done with grafting 
in Ceylon : in his fields he gets one man 
to do 200 to 300 grafts a day of Ledger or high class 
hybrid — all selected by careful analysis — on ordinary 
hybrid or succirubra stocks and with scarcely any 
failures. Mr. Wijinschunk-dom speaks of coffee in 
East Java as looking very flourishing at present and a 
good deal is being done with tea, tobacco and indigo ; 
but sugar is under a heavy cloud with disease 
in the canes and other drawbacks. He men- 
tions a curious circumstance in his experience 
as an indigo planter of the much less quantity 
extract he is able to get from his leaves, than 
is got in India. The return of crop per acre 
in leaf is much heavier than in India, but in 
extract it is less. Our visitor is going on to India 
to learn somewhat of the different processes fol- 
lowed in Indigo Factories there. Meantime this 
exceptionally intelligent Java proprietor — speaking 
English well — is determined to see all he can of 
"Cinchona" in Ceylon. We tried to dissuade 
him from travelling in the present weather 
so far as Uva and after all perhaps to see 
but poor fields, so much having been cut 
down. Oh ! but that will be a great satisfac- 
tion to me and my Java friends, to be able to 
say that so much has been cut, that little is left 
— was the substance of his reply. So, Mr, 
Wijinschunk-dom has started for Nuwara Eliya 
intending thence to visit Udapussellawa, Badulla 
district, Madulsima, and in coming back, the Agras 
division of Dimbula. The less evidence he finds 
of Ceylon being able to keep up her recent ex- 
ports of bark, the better pleased he will be I 
We bespeak all due attention to our visitor. He 
ought to be shown somewhat of the ravages done 
by an attack of caterpillars on some cinchona 
fields in Uva. We have heard of one case where 
a clearing of considerable extent, after the trees 
had been shaved once or twice, was nearly 
killed out by an attack of caterpillars eating 
the leaves and so affecting the sap that the tree died 
and the bark which could scarcely be separated, 
was useless. In connection with cinchona in Java, 
Mr. G. D. T. Bell, in a letter received today, wishes 
to correct one or two inadvertent slips in our 
account of his visit. One was that there was a 
large extent under cinchona in Java. Mr. Bell 
writes : — 
"I had in fact no opportunity of learning what 
amount of cinchona there is growing in Java, and I 
only wished to say that from what I saw and heard, 
the cinchona was strong and healthy and generally gave 
a very much higher percentage of quinine than that in 
Ceylon. You also mentioned that, I saw Mr. Mundt. I 
did not sec that gentleman but Mr. Van Romunde, the 
Director of the Government Cinchona Gardens, to whom 
you were kind enough to give me a letter of introduc- 
tion and who gave me no inlormation as to the quantity 
of cinchona in the Island." 
Tobacco in North Boeneo. — The following is from 
a reliable quarter as to the progress making with 
tobacco in North Borneo : — 
A report was current in Hongkong that the Darvel 
Bay and Marudu Bay tobacco of last year's crop had 
been most favourably priced in Europe. We expect 
to hear the report confirmed via Singapore. The 
reports of this year's crops are favourable all round, 
more especially on the Segaliud river in Sandaban 
Bay. Another tobacco company has been formed in 
Hongkong to plant on the Kiribatangan river. A good 
deal of building is going on in Sandakan, and a small 
but steady influx of the artizan class of Chinese from 
Hongkong, irrespective of estate labourers. Both Malay 
and Chinese coolies are in great demand for the estates. 
The Strawsonizer. — A Colombo correspondent 
writes :— " I see your London correspondent takes 
up the ' Strawsonizer,' Our London folks called 
at the Company's office, but they were not able 
to get much information. However, they write 
as follows : — ' At present none are being made, and 
it is very difficult to see how it could be of any 
use amongst tea or coffee on an average Ceylon 
estate.' I send you the supplement to Bell's 
Weekly Messenger on the machine, but my 
friends have formed a poor opinion of it and write 
plainly on the subject. They were told in the 
London office that ' arrangements were being made ' 
for its manufacture."— Bell's Weekly Messenger, 
however, bears splendid testimony to the value of 
the machine, from "all sorts and conditions" of 
press and agricultural authorities. There must be 
a great deal in the Strawsonizer when it is the 
subject of repeated praise in the London Times, 
Agricultural Gazette, Farmer's Gazette, Mark Lane 
Express, and from Professor Munro, d.sc. , f.c.s., 
Mr. Charles Mitchen, Agricultural Adviser to the 
Committee of Council for Agriculture, and Dr. Frear, 
Messrs. Sutton. We are not convinced that a 
machine used for hops, vines &o. cannot be ad- 
vantageously adapted for coffee. It might be made 
of a size to be drawn by coolies along coffee 
estate paths if not among the bushes. Our cor- 
respondent should ask his London friends to apply 
again and to make enquiry at one or other of 
the public men who testify to the admirable work 
done by the " Strawsonizer." 
Professor Drtjmmond on the African Elephant 
and Ivory. — In a review in the British Trade Journal 
of Professor's Drummond's "Tropical Africa" 
we find it stated : — 
On the question of ivory Professor Drummond re- 
marks that the African elephant has never been suc- 
cessfully tamed, so that his strength is a failure. "As 
a source of ivory, on the other hand, he has been but 
too great a success. The cost of ivory at present is 
about half-a-sovereign per pound. An average tusk 
weighs from twenty to thirty pounds. Each animal 
has two, and in Africa both male and female carry 
tusks. The average elephant is therefore worth in 
pounds sterling the weight in pounds avoirdupois of one 
of his tusks. I have frequently seen single tusks turn- 
ing the scale upon ninety pouuds, the pair in this case 
being worth nearly 1001. sterling— so that a herd of 
elephants is about as valuable as a gold mine. The 
temptation to sacrifice the animal for his tusks is 
therefore great ; and as he becomes scarcer, he will be 
pursued by the hunter with ever-increasing eagerness. 
But the truth is, sad though the confession be, the 
sooner the last elephant falls beforethe hunter's bullet, 
the better for Africa. Ivory introduces into the coun- 
try at present an abnormal state of things. Upon this 
one article is set so enormous a premium that none 
otber among African products secures the slightest 
general attention ; nor will almost anyone in the inte- 
rior condescend to touch the normal wealth, or develop 
the legitimate industries of the couutry, so long as a 
tusk remains." The author believes that when the ele- 
phant is exterminated one stage in the abolition of the 
slave trade will be reached, this being due to the fact 
that for every tusk the Arab trader purchases he mus t 
buy, borrow, or steal a slave to carry it to the coast 
