540 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [February i, 1 888. 
for the special benefit of their fellow-countrymen. 
After a most unsatisfactory and desultory 6eason to 
the Teamen supplies in the North have ceased ; the 
remainder of the " Shuntams " — which rubbish, owing 
to the fall in silver of late years, has so disastrously 
swelled the export — is being broken up the natives 
and sold as dust to the Russians for brick Tea, Tea- 
men thereby avoiding payment of half the 
heavy duty. Accordingiy there will be a deficiency 
to London of between fifteen and twenty million 
pounds from the North of China alone this season — 
much more than the equivalent of an entire second crop, 
as your informant predicted so far back as last May : 
moreover, the determination of foreign buyers not to 
purchase the residue of the crop has extended to Foo- 
chow, from whioh port likewise supplies are at present 
ten million pounds short of last year's, the Teamen there 
asserting they will keep their unsold stock until next 
season, and then mix it with new leaf. 
The all-powerful guilds, therefore, seem to have been 
beaten hopelessly upon their own territory, and it is 
not surprising to learn that Chinese officials have be- 
come alarmed at the greatly diminished revenue from 
Tea. This concern on their part, it is to be hoped, 
may result in a better article being prepared for export 
than of late years, which is all that is required to re- 
gain for China tea the supremacy which undoubtedly 
now is held by Indian and Ceylon growths. Ample sup- 
plies of these latter have prevented the market for 
China tea in London from advancing materially in price 
as yet ; still, such a decrement as thirty million pounds 
of low-priced tea in a single season must before long be 
felt acutely by retailers here, and cannot but tend to 
the distribution of a vastly more healthy, if somewhat 
more costly, article than has existed since the public 
demanded cheap tea, unconcerned as to how nasty and 
unwholesome such might prove. — L. $ C. Exiiress, 
Dec. 30th. 
PLANTING IN NETHEELANDS INDIA. 
(Translated for the Straits Times.) 
The steady spread of planting enterprise in Palem- 
bang, and the increasing inflow of coolies have 
resulted in the passing of a Labourer's Ordinance by 
the Netherlands India Government, specially ap- 
plicable to that Eesidency. Besides the usual pro- 
visions, it prescribes that no coolie shall work more 
than ten hours a day inclusive of the time he is 
engaged on extra duties. Contracts with coolies 
must also make it compulsory on the employer to 
supply the coolies with rice and salt only. It must 
also explicitly be set forth in contracts when the 
employer agrees to supply the coolies with rations 
and clothes how these supplies will be furnished. 
The Ordinance expressly provides that the quarter- 
ing and medical treatment of the coolies shall be 
provided for by the employer free of charge. Medical 
treatment is also made compulsory in case of wounds 
received even when not in service. 
The Surabaya Courant reports the receipt of advices 
from London announcing a rapid advance in the 
price of cinchona. Recent sales of bark at Amster- 
dam show a marked rise in quotations. The rise 
will prove highly welcome to cinchona planters in 
Java from its rendering lighter the burden of tax- 
ation on them. 
* . 
Coconut oa Cocoanut. — Professor Balfour directs 
the attention of botanists {Ann. Hot., p. 185J to the 
fact that cocoanut should correctly be written coco, 
and that now that coca is becoming an important 
therapeutic agent, it is all ihe more necessary that a 
correct orthography should be followed, so that less 
confusion may arise than at present appears to exist, 
he having known people who were content in the belief 
that the coconut palm was the source of both cocoa 
Hud coca. Dr. Balfour appears, however, to have 
overlooked the fact that the name coco ia commonly 
applied to the root of Colocasia antiquorum. — Phar- 
maceutical Journul. 
Ooi fee in Ooobg.— During the year 1886-87, Coorg 
coffee rose from Rs. 24 per cent, to Rs. 45. This 
remarkable rebound after several years of low prices, 
caused the greatest activity in the market, but coming 
at a season when the out-turn was as a whole un- 
ufally small, the planters did not benefit as they 
might have done otherwise. On the other hand, the 
commonest native coffee, as well as the most inferior 
kinds of plantation coffee, were in great demand, 
being purchased chiefly by French and German firms 
on the west coast, and obtained frequently at high 
prices as the superior kinds. Most of the coffee from 
Coorg, estimated at three-fourths of the whole, was 
despatched to the sea port on the west coast, the 
remainder being sent to the curing establishments at 
Eunsur and Bangalore. The quantity of coffee ex- 
ported in 1886-87 amounted to 3,631 tons. The total 
area assessed for coffee, during this period, was 80,570 
acres, while about 15,000 acres, situated in the steep 
ghat slopes and other uncongenial localities, are not 
under cultivation. — Madras Times. 
Sugared Mobtae. — Deputy Surgeon-General Short, 
F. L. S., writes to the Madras Mail from Yercaud : — 
" How true is the saying, ' There is nothing new under 
the sun,' as relates to the question of sugared mortar. 
To my personal knowledge it has been in use for the 
last 40 years, and, as pointed out by Surgeon-General 
Cornish, Mr. Baldrey, and others, the difficulty of 
breaking old walls is a proof of its tenacity. As a 
small experiment, perhaps the following may prove 
interesting. I purchased some years ago at an auction 
sale a Burmese image of Buddha, or one of bis 
satellites, in white marble, which some mischief-maker 
had damaged by knocking off its nose, and as there is 
no deformity equivalent to a noseless person or image, 
the features of this human form divine were com- 
pletely disfigured. After a time I thought I might 
perform what doctors call a valiacotian operation, 
and thus remedy the disfigurement by giving it a 
new nose. With this view I set to work and got some 
slaked lime (chunam), prepared from the comnjon lime- 
stone, or kunkur, finely powered, sifted, and softened 
with a saturated solution of sugar and water, and after 
freely washing the wound with the solution, I put on 
an artificial nose, which to my delight succeeded beauti- 
fully. It is some five years now since this was done, 
and the image has, under a tree in the compound, 
been exposed to all weathers. There is the nose as 
good and firm as the marble of which the image itself 
is made. In another instance, a china garden seat 
got broken. This I caused to be filled with chunam 
(lime) And restored to its original form and size. 
The seat was rebroken through the carelessness of a 
horsekeeper and the seat itself injured ; this also the 
bricklayer managed to repair with the usual chunam. 
Then came accident number three. A fitout lump of 
a gardener must needs get on it to reach something 
on the tree under which it was placed, and the top of 
the seat came down and was smashed to pieces. This 
time the bricklayer failed completely to mend it, and 
so at last I took it in hand, and got some well-sifted 
powdered chunam, and had it ground in a millstone, 
with a saturated solution of jaggery got for the purpose, 
and to the mass I added tbe whites of two eggs ; and 
then with this substance I brought all the broken 
pieces together and kept the seat upside down for a 
couple of days to allow the mortar to settle; when 
taken up, the seat was found perfect and the broken 
pieces quite firm, and there it has stood undtr the 
same tree with the Burmese image for the last tbr< e 
months, during which time I have frequently had oc- 
casion to use it. Side by side they prove the tenacity 
of sugared mortar, or chunam in one instance, and 
the addition of the white of an egg in the other. In 
the first I used white crystallized sugar ; but in the 
second the common jaggery from the bazaar." Might 
not plaster of Paris, which is often used as a cemtnt 
in pharmacies, bind much firmer if made into a paste 
with syr. simpl. instead of water ?— Planters' Gazette. 
