THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [May i, i8qo; 
CEYLON TEA IN THE LONDON MARKET 
DURING 1889. 
On Buooeeding pages we now reproduce the 
whole of the valuable Report of Messrs. Wilson, 
Smithett & Co. (received by last mail) together 
with their long and interesting lists of the sales 
of Ceylon Estates' teas with total quantities and 
average prices realized during 1889. We have 
already analyzed the Report and noticed the salient 
points. But we may call attention to the inter- 
esting statistical returns appended to the R9port. 
We also make considerable extracts — all bearing 
on Ceylon teas — from the Annual Report of Messrs. 
Geo. White & Co., another well-known London 
House who deal with Indian, Ceylon and Java teas 
in the one Report. The whole of this matter 
being embodied in the Tropical Agriculturist will 
make the matter easy of aocess for referenoe to 
our planting readers at any time. 
GEMING MINING PROSPECTS IN BURMA: 
SIR LEPEL GRIFFIN'S VISIT. 
{Continued.) 
HE ALTH AT THE MINES — PREVALENCE OF LIMESTONE — 
THE MATRIX, A MYTH ? — WHERE THE RUBIES ARE 
FOUND — LITTLE WORK DONE : MACHINERY NOT TRANS- 
PORTED — FOUR DIFFERENT MODES OF MINING. 
It has been apparently the old story over again: 
disregard of men with local knowledge and local 
experience, who know how to live in the country 
under all conditions, in fact the fittest who have 
survived when the others have perished, and the 
engagement of men whose brief knowledge of life has 
been gained in Europe, in their own native country, 
and who as a natural consequence fall victims to 
the first maladies to which they are exposed. It 
may perhaps be said that the civil and military 
officers in the district have suffered as much as or more 
than those of whom we are writing ; but inquiry will 
demonstrate that the over-exertions and exposure 
oonsequent on the prosecution of their duties must 
necessarily prove almost deadly. It would be the 
same in their own native country. They tell of 
fording icy cold rivers a dozen times a day, wet 
up to the middle and their clothes drying on them ; 
obliged to be content with such food as they could 
carry with them or pick up on the way, and this 
for stretohes of 36 and 48 hours on end; and hardly 
a decent shelter for weeks together— hunting dacoits. 
Such a life is sufficient in itself to destroy the finest 
contribution apart from any question of olimate or 
malaria. Another matter in this connection may 
be alluded to without committing ourselves to an 
opinion. In Ceylon, fever is said to be more pre- 
valent where the water used by the inhabitants 
runs over limestone, which it seems is the case to 
a very large extent in the ruby mines distriot. 
In fact limestone of different kinds seems to be 
present in great quantity all over Burma ; and if 
there is any truth in the Ceylon theory of fever 
resulting from the use of such water — it may 
possibly help to elucidate the mystery which 
attaches to the prevalence of fever in situations 
which might be supposed to be favourable to the 
health of Europeans, for instance Mogok and Bernard- 
myo at an elevation of 4,000 to 6,000 feet above 
sea-level. 
It is in reference to the exietenoe of this lime- 
stone at Mogok and in the ruby mine district 
g^nfrally that Mr. Streeter announced with 
a considerable amount of jubilation that the 
matrix of the precious rubies had been dis- 
covered, and congratulated the shareholders of 
the Company on having aeoured the monopoly 
of working it, and for this matrix of crjstalized 
limestone he insisted search should be made in 
Ceylon, before any operations were commenced in 
the formation of a company. It transpired 
however very shortly after this expression of opinion 
on the part of Mr. Streeter, that the first thing 
that would engage the attention of the Company's 
engineers was the collection of gems from the 
alluvial deposits in the flats and valleys of the 
concession, going so far as even the bed of the 
river from which the water was to be diverted. 
On the return of the Chairman and party from the 
mines, Sir Lepel Griffin was asked about this matrix 
and what was purposed to be done with it. Hia 
reply was as follows: — "I fancy the great bulk of 
the rock in that part of the country is limestone ; 
there is gneiss and a great deal of day. There 
is also some very fine true alabaster. We are 
driving one drift through the side of a hill into 
an old shaft which some of our English miners 
are now sinking. It goes through a bed of pure 
alabaster. It is not very hard to work, though we 
had to use dynamite to blast it " Being reminded 
that Mr. Streeter had been assured the best gems 
would be found in orystalizsd limestone, he said : 
— "Yes, there is a sort of granu'ated limestone 
which is a good find I believe, but we have not 
touohed it yet. We have some reports on the sub- 
ject from the Ruby Mines, but I am not at all 
satisfied that we have sufficient scientific knowledge 
about the strata. I have asked Mr. Noetling of 
the Geological Survey to visit Mogok. He will be 
there in a month's time, and I hope he will be 
able to give us a great deal of assistance. He is 
a very clever man and will be able to point out 
where the best chances are. As for the gneiss, as 
far as I saw, it was not in situ: it is scattered 
about and disintegrated, mixed with clay and loam. 
Most of the rubies are found in the stuff called 
byon— which is a Bort of clay mixed with gravel 
and sand, disintegrated gneiss andjimestone, caked 
together. It comes in strata five to ten feet thick, 
under the alluvial clay. It ha3 been washed into 
great fissures in the rocks, which is a different 
form of miniDg but still it comes to the same thing. 
The byon varies immensely in different places. 
It is not by any means all of one sort. In some 
plaoes, especially in the lower beds of the river, 
it is so mixed with large gravel and pieces of rook, 
that I think it will be very difficult to pass it 
through washers at all. There are garnets as well as 
rubies in the same kind of limestone. With the 
aid of pumps we hope to come upon a new stratum 
which has never been touched at all, especially 
the alluvium of the plain and the bed of the 
river." This is all the information on this part 
of the subject that waa elicited from Sir Lepel 
Griffin, and it was well he deduced from what 
he has said that very little is known of the 
matrix at Mogok by any of the officials con- 
nected with the mines. The executive engineer 
of the works did not pretend to have any 
knowledge of it further than having to devise 
some means at some future day of extracting the 
gems from it. He called it "Calcareous " lime- 
stone, whilst Sir Lepel Griffin spoke of it as 
"granulated" limestone. In an article on this subjeot 
written from information gathered in conversation 
with the exeoutive engineer of the Company we are 
toll : — " There are at least two principal district 
locations in whioh the precious gems are to be found, 
and their most facile and economical abstraction 
from these of oourse engages the attention of the 
engineers as well as the manager of the mines. 
Rubies are found embedded in a stiff day which is no 
doubt an alluvial deposit. This clay varies a go 0 d 
deal both in colour and tenacity as well as in oo 
