650 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 
[Marcs i, 1890. 
Operations of the Company. It may be, indeed, 
that they have accrued solely upon the latter ; for 
the brief remark in the report that " the planting 
operations of the Company were disappointing during 
the past year owing to the low price ruling for tea 
during the first six months of 1889 " would tend to 
support a supposition that no profit whatever was 
made upon them. Assuming, however, such a 
supposition to be warranted, it must be borne in 
mind that on most, if not on all of the 
properties in which the Company has an interest, 
the process of change from the cultivation of coffee 
to that of tea has been going on year after year for 
a long time past, causing an outlay which should 
be met — as it has been — solely out of profits made 
in other directions. 
It is disappointing to read, as we do in this 
Report, that " in spite of all endeavours to retain 
tho area of ooffee on the Company's estates, it is 
gradually diminishing, and has now become in- 
significant." It is quite certain that, in view of 
the high prioes which coffee has of late been fetching, 
every endeavour possible would have been made to 
keep the coffee alive ; and we think that we 
must conolude with regret that, save in some 
exceptionally favourable localities, Ceylon has 
seen the last of successful ooffee cultivation. The 
report tells us ' the story generally heard with 
respect to cinchona. The price obtained for it has 
only just sufficed to meet the charges for harvest- 
ing, shipping, and landing here, and this article 
has therefore contributed no quota towards the 
profit made. 
COLOMBO COMMERCIAL COMPANY, LTD. 
Report. 
To be presented to the Fifteenth Ordinary Genera* 
Meeting of the Company, on Wednesday, the 12th dav 
of February 1890, at 12-30 o'clock p.m. 
The Directors are now able to place the following 
Annual Accounts before Shareholders, viz : — Profit and 
Loss Account for the year ending 30th September, 
1889. Balance Sheet made up to 30th September 1889. 
From these it will be seen that the year's operation 
have resulted in a profit of £2,538 7s lOd, which with the 
balance of £79 Oh lid, brought forward from last year, 
gives a total of£2,617 8s 9d at the credit for profit and loss. 
The Directors propose that the sum of £1,089 be now 
devoted to the payment in full of the Dividend on 
the 6 per cent Preference Shares for the year end- 
ing 30th September last, and that a Dividend of 2 
per cent on the Ordinary Shares for the same period 
be also paid ; this latter will absorb a further sum 
of £1,400, leaving a balance of £128 8s 9d to be 
carried forward to next account. The general trading 
business of the Company continues to show a satis- 
factory increase, and the Directors hope for futher 
expansion in this respect, as the Tea planted through- 
out the Island comes into bearing. The planting oper- 
ations of the Company were disappointing during the 
past year owing to the low price ruling for lea dur- 
ing the first six months of 1889. The market price 
for Ceylon Tea has sinoe considerably improved, and 
the prices now ruling are satisfactory. Should they 
continue the Directors look for a better result from the 
working of the Company's Estates for the current 
year, as the yield of Tea should exceed last 
season's on account of the bushes being nearer maturity. 
In Bpite of all endeavours to retain the area under 
coffee on the Company's estates it is gradually diminish- 
ing, and has now become, insignificant, but tea is being 
planted up as the coffee decays. 
The. Company brought to market a considerable 
quantity of cinchona baric ; the prices obtained for this 
article, however, did not much more than cover the oost 
(if barvehting, shipping and landing in this country. 
Mr. John Brown, Chairman of the Board, left for 
Ceylon in November, and will inspect tho properties in 
which tho Company is interested. 
THE UPAS. 
The devil, some say, is not so black as he is 
painted : neither is the Upas the embodiment of 
all that is malignant in the vegetable kingdom 
as it has been popularly believed to be. This tree 
has long been regarded as exercising deadly effects 
on the unwary traveller who is foolish or ignorant 
enough to rest beneath its treacherous branches : 
and to court sleep within the precincts of its 
shade has been considered tantmount to laying 
oneself down to die. It has thus become a fami- 
liar subject for allegory, so much bo that the very 
name conveys sinister associations. A paper in 
Dr. Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Products of 
India (the first two volumes of which have re- 
cently been issued) gives an account of this in- 
teresting botanical specimen, however, which dispels 
much _ of the superstition and evil reputation that 
has hitherto enveloped it, wb/le an explanation is 
given of the circumstanoes under which its notoriously 
bad character came to be acquired. 
A Dutch surgeon by name of Foersch, who flour- 
ishe apparently in Java about the end of last 
century, put in circulation preposterously exag- 
gerated statements about the plant, and appears 
to have been either the author or the victim of a 
pretty considerable hoax. The tree was described 
by him as growing in a desert tract with no other 
vegetation within a range of ten or twelve miles. 
It was customary to offer condemned criminals a 
free pardon if they went and collected some of 
the poison, but out of every twenty who made the 
attempt not more than two ever returned. (Most 
probably the majority thought it prudent to evade 
in some other direction.) Foersch states that he 
conversed with some of those who had survived 
the ordeal, from whom he learned that the ground 
was strewn with the bones of those who had perished 
in ti.^ir endeavour to work out their salvation ; 
and that such was the virulence of the poison 
that " there was no fish in the waters, nor had 
any rat, mouse or any other vermin been found 
there : also, that when birds flew so near the 
tree that the effluvia reached them, they fell 
victims." Many more equally absurd things were 
written at the time and so passed into current belief. 
There are two species of the Upas, the antiaris 
innoxia oocuring in Burma and the Indian Archi- 
pelago ; and the antiaris taxicaria indigenous to the 
Western Ghats and Ceylon (although Borne authors 
have classified them as one). The foundation on 
which the ill-repute of the tree has been fabri- 
cated appears to be that certain of the localities 
in which it is found in Java are in themselves 
noxious owing to the nature of the ground, which 
is creviced with fissures communicating with 
the craters of volcanoes, and from these issue 
carbonic acid and sulphurous fumes in suffi- 
cient abundance to be fatal to animab who ap- 
proached too closely. Similarly the waters of 
the adjaoent rivers and lakes become so highly 
charged with sulphuric acid that no fish can live 
in them. In different places, however, the Upas 
rears itself side by side with other trees, and 
birds and lizards have been observed amongst its 
branches: so it oannotbe so very pestilent a shrub. 
Moreover, it is cultivated in botanic gardens and 
seems to give no evidence there of the baneful in- 
fluences that have been ascribed to it. 
For all that, and although it has been much be- 
lied, the Upas tree is not altogether harmless. 
From incisions made in the trunk there exudes 
a white kind of gum-resin, which, mixed with other 
substances, probably merely to give it consistence 
forms the Upas antiar or arrow-head-poison of th^ 
natives of Java, — this antiar owing its viruleno 0 
to a crystalline principle, antiarin. The tree exhal 
