November i, 1887.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
35/ 
derably, although 8,200 coolies aro still employed in the 
gardens. In 1870 their tea cost the Assam Com- 
pany Is. 6d. per lb., and whon their managers 
wero told that competition would make it neces- 
sary for them to reduce the cost of production, so 
that it might bo laid down in Mincing Lane at Is. 
per lb., they insisted that it would be impossible 
to grow and manufacture it for that price. Yet 
last year they did it for 10Jd. ! Now they are 
told that they must reduce it to 6d. if they are to 
' successfully meet competition. 
" The Assam Company can say what can be said 
by few othor companies, namely, that it has re- 
turned its capital of £187,160 five times over. 
Altogether it has returned £990,477. 
" Its dividends have varied considerably, but they 
have almost always been high. In 1877 it paid no 
less than 35 per cent., and in the last ten years 
it has declared dividends as follows : — 
Per cent. 
1878 
25 
1875) 
27 
1880 
10 
1881 
7 
1882 
25 
1883 
10 
1884 
1885 
14 
14 
1886 
20 
1887 
10 
" The shares have been as high as 400 premium, 
they are now at 100, and, although the reduction 
of prices must very considerably affect profits, the 
position of the Company is extremely strong. Its 
called-up capital, as we have said, is £187,100, and 
the value of its estates, gardens, buildings, &c, in 
Assam is estimated at £198,822. If to these we 
add other assets at the close of tho year, such as 
stock of tea unsold, stock in baud, cash, &c, the 
total value of the property and assets of the 
Company is £300,382, which, with the reserve fund 
of £40,57 1, makes a total of £340,965. On tho other 
hand, the balance of bills drawn in India previous to 
Blfl December, and open accounts in India and Eng- 
land, aniouut to £3.'>, 4 18. 
" The (lomaud for Indian tea is, increasing very 
rapidly. In April last, for tho first time, the 
deliveries of Indian and Ceylon tea exceeded the 
deliveries of China for home consumption, the 
proportion being f)l to 19. It is largely a question 
of price, though not entirely so. Tho data are 
wanting upon which to ba.^o a confident opinion 
as to whether tea can bo profitably produced in 
India at a lower price than in China. In both 
countries labour is cheap, but it may bo presumed 
that British skill and enterprise, the use of labour- 
saving machines, and superior cultivation and business 
aptitude, will give the advantage to the British com- 
panies, and foremost among these stands the Assam 
Company. 
" In accordance with our usual practice we give 
the names of the directors of this very succeseful 
undertaking: — Mr. Q, Turnbull, Chairman ; Mr. A. K. 
Fisher, l topnty < lliairman, MajoH leneral Be idle, Mr.t K 
Paton, .Mr. J. Graham, <). 1 1., .Mr. A. Robinson and M r. 
H. \V. Wimshurst (Managing Director and Secretary). 
" Mr. Walter 1'rideaux, who served tho Company 
as Secretary, Director, Deputy Chairman, and Chair- 
m in for a period extending over forty-eight years, 
that it to say, from the establishment ol the Company, 
retired at tho beginning of the present year, owing to 
failing health and impaired sight.— Pioneer, Oct. lth. 
PLANTING. IN NETHERLANDS INDIA, 
i Translated for the dtrafrt Timet.) 
Tho .Am'ii li.id, says flint, on behalf of cinchona plant- 
er * in that island, inquiries i n the spot have been made 
into the condition ot t be same linn of plantation cntor- 
pree in Ceylon, They bave asoex'oJned inconsequence 
that of late the cxpor: of rout bark from Cojlon has 
be. n enormous. Many cinohona trees have been pulled 
up altogether from their being- stricken with disease, or 
to wake room tor tea, in ether oiMa, cinchona trees 
are either peeled, or shorn of their branches for collect- 
ing purposes. No fresh plantations are formed owing 
to the old ones proviag unprofitable speculations. 
PLANTING IN MANILA. 
(Translated for the Strait* Times.) 
At Madrid, Honor Taviol de Andrado has brought 
out a Handbook of the Philippines, It gives not 
only a history of the country, but also a description 
of the native races, their manners and customs. 
"Within the present century the import and export 
trade of the islands has risen in value from SlO.OOO.OOO 
in 1810 to $45,000,000 in 1886. A colony which can 
aggregate such an amount of trade can hardly be 
termed poor. It is now passing through a crisis in 
the production of sugar and tobacco, serious enough, 
but not in the least alarming when its teeming re- 
sources aro borne in mind. Notwithstanding the de- 
pression of trade, the value of tho import and ex- 
port business done last year showed a falling 
off amounting only to one and a half 
million of dollars compared with the cor- 
responding figures for 1885. More sugar and hemp 
might have been exported in that period had not 
holders preferred to keep their stocks in expectation 
of better times. Coffee will yet bear a more prom- 
inent part in furthering the welfare of tho islands 
when plantations of it are once carefully seen to and 
extended. Coffee estates in South America, especially 
in Brazil, are rapidly disappearing from disease. Coffee 
trees there are attacked by canker at the root. This 
opens out a splendid future for coffee growing coun- 
tries freo from canker and leaf disease. AVith coffeo 
cultivation extended and encouraged, the Philippines will 
count npon an export product to make up for the losses 
in sugar, provided the diseases so fatal elsewhere do not 
break out there. 
♦ 
CEYLON TEA IN FRANCE AND RUSSIA. 
(From our Special Correspondent) 
Viciiy, 29th September 1887. 
I have already referred to the benefit which 
might be expected from the establishment of a 
Ceylon Produce — and especially Tea — Agenoy in 
Paris, and how a Ceylon Cafe or rather Theerio 
might yield a good return, if under shrewd man- 
agement, and combined with the sale of Ceylon 
produce generally in convenient packets and of 
curios peculiar to tho island. Meantime, recurring 
to our experience here, we cannot find much 
trace of the fashion which is said to have become 
common in society in Paris of " five o'clock tea." 
At none of the hotels, "Grand" or otherwiso, 
is there such a practice and the quantity of tea 
used altogether at Vichy is very small. The 
principal grocery establishments — and one is filled 
with admiration at the varied and admirable dis- 
play of products and goods from all parts of 
the world in these places — keep tea in limited 
quantities almost entirely to meet English and 
perhaps Russian requirements during the season. 
At tho chief store we fouud collee beans of no 
less than a dozen countries displayed m large 
sacks ready for sale at prices varying from 2 to 
4 francs ('2b to 3s Id) per lb. The retail price 
had been raised very recently, wo were fold, by 
half-a-franc, and another increase might have to 
take placo if the threatened scarcity and dearncss 
were realized. I have no meaus here, in tho centre 
of France, of learning what the Customs duty on 
collee is — the grocers profess themselves ignorant, 
buying at secondhand — and there is no Ceylon 
Directory or Whittakcr within reach; but making 
the most aiuplo allowance both for the duty, ana 
for the charges of a fashionable shop, we can judge 
how enormous is the expense of their favourite 
beverage to the French people and how tuv 
natural it is that the peasantry ahoulJ drink 
••collee" made ohiclly from a country acorn with 
a lew beans ol the MaUmiquo or Java produce 
