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THF. TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [August ?, 1888. 
Yanilla-growcng in Mexico.— Sr. C. B. Pedetro 
of Mexico, recently when on a visit to the United 
States, imparted the following items concerning 
vanilla-cultivation in Mexico to the Republican news- 
paper of St. Louis :—" Vanilla flourishes in two 
places in Mexico, Papantia, in the State of Vera 
Cruz, and Misantia; but the first place is the most 
important. This town, of about 10,000 inhabitants, 
is in the land of the Toconaco Indians, who are as 
indolent and improvident as aoy people on earth. 
Vanilla is found wild in the forests around Papantia 
clinging to the trees and bushes for support. When 
the beans ripen in November or December the na- 
tives go out into the forests to gather them. All 
kinds are put into old sacks together and brought 
into Papantia to market. Here there are a number 
of buyers, Spaniards or Americans, and the com- 
petition reminds one of what is to be seen in a 
street where second-hand stores prevail. The old 
women are generally in the lead, half naked, and with 
haggard faces begrimed with dirt. Then come the 
children, equally pitiable in appearance, and finally the 
oM men bring up the rear, their long stiff hair, matted 
and dirty sometimes, standing out twelve inches, while 
their beards, filthy and long, lend a fiuiah to the 
picture that is most revolting. The beans are purchased 
by middlemen at the rate of 42s. or 50». per 1,000, taken 
as they are put up by the natives. One thousand good- 
sized green vanilla beans will weigh 60 lbs. ; the 
tame, when cured, about 10 lb. The first fine morning 
planks are arranged and covered with quilts ou which 
the beans are laid after being divested of their stems. 
The sweating process, as it is called, then takes place, and 
has to be repeated seven times before all the water has 
evaporated. Then the beans are heated slightly and 
placed on shelves to dry and air. After this they are 
assorted in lots of fifty beans, graded according to 
length. In fine weather the curing process takes three 
weeks, but such weather rarely prevails, and the curing 
sometimes takes from four to five months. Last year 
the beans sold for 58s. per 100, which was about a 
pound, but owing to a heavy crop this year and the 
growing competition in the business, the best beans 
only bring 50?. a pound or 100, and the inferior from 
30s, to 42s. The principal markets for vanilla beans 
are New York, St. Louis, and Chicago. They are 
bought chiefly by wholesale druggists and fine confec- 
tioners, and are becoming an important article of Mexi- 
can commerce. Last year, from the vicinity of Papantia 
alone, 50,000,000 beans were exported." — Chemist and 
Druggist. 
English Tobacco. — In the synopsis of the judges 
upon the manufactured British grown Tobacco, con- 
firming the award of the first prize to us, it is 
stated that the report about to be furnished by the 
experts through the agency of the London Chamber 
of Commerce " will not be favourable to the growth 
of Tobacco in England, inasmuch as, amoDgst other 
objections, there was an excess of moisture in all the 
samples exhibited, and hot a shigle lot was in really 
merchantable condition." It is not our desire to 
champion the subject, but as we have made exhaus- 
tive experiments during the past two seasons, at a 
cost of several hundred pounds, all we ask is that 
the British-grown Tobacco may have fair considera- 
tion; and we venture to say that a mistake has been 
made, either by the London Chamber of Commerce 
or by those responsible for fixing the date of the 
trials, from the fact that it is impossible for Tnbacco 
grown during the summer of 1887, either in the 
British Isles or in those oountries from which our 
principal supplies are obtained, to be in a merchant- 
able condition in the month of May, 1888. Tobacco 
grown in the United States has to pass through 
what, is known as the " May sweat," and to bring 
the British Tobacco into marketable condition it was 
equally necessary that it should have passed through 
a similar process, and thus brought into a condition 
to be fairly compared with Tobacco from other 
countries. We, therefore, maintain that the com- 
petition should have taken place, say, about the 
month of September next, by which time, as we 
understand, the first importations of the American 
Tobacco crop of 1887 might be expected to reach 
the manufacturer in England. It is clear from this 
point of view that the experts have not only com- 
mitted an error of judgment in submitting the 
English-grown Tobacco to a final test at the present 
time, but they have also, upon an unsound basis, 
compiled a discouraging report, which we think must 
have the effect of limiHn? future experiments, — James 
Carter & Co. — Gardeners' Chronic'*. 
Essential Oil in Tea.— Dr. Ha«sal, the well-known 
food analyst, writes as follows regarding the essentia 
oil in tea : — " The volatile oil is not present in fresh tea 
but is developed in the course of drying and roasting 
It is of a lemon colour, readily solidifies, and becomes 
resinous on exposure to the air. It is to it that the 
aroma is mainly due. The amount present in tea is 
stated to be about 1 per cent., a statement we consider 
to be open to much doubt. For the estimation of the 
volatile oil, a considerable quantity of t a must be oper- 
ated upon. This must be distilled with water and the 
distillate received into a cool receiver. The oil should 
be found floating upon the water. We may state, how- 
ever, that, iu coitain attempts we have made, we have 
failed to obtain any weighable amount of the oil. The 
distillate had the odour of tea, but no oil drops were 
visible." According to Mulder's frequently quoted 
analysis, green tea contains 79 per cent., and black tea 
60 per cent, of essential oil. — Indian Tea Guzeltt. 
Blended Tea.— Mr. A Brooke, of the firm of Brooke, 
Bond & Co., tea merchants of London, was lately in 
America on a visit of pleasure and information. His 
firm leads in the selling of blended teas wholesale iu 
the English market. Mr. Brooke has communicated 
some pertinent facts regarding the trade in blended tea. 
He says : — " The blend-of-tea idea is of somewhat new 
growth in England. A. variety of causes have contributed 
to make the system popular. The change in the English 
taste from the weak growth of China to the more 
robust product of India, necessitated some system where- 
by uniformity iu strength and flavor became a necess- 
ity. China teas are imported in large chops embracing 
some 400 or 500 half-chests, all of one kind, whereas 
the India gardens produce smaller parcels of tea at a 
time, and these vary greatly in character with the 
changing seasons of the year. " Again, the grocer's 
business embraces a variety of articles, and how 
natural it is that he is notable to give that care, at- 
tention and time to the blending of tea that its import- 
ance demands. What the grocer needs is a uniform 
standard, reliable blend graded iu qualities from fair to 
fine, even in the leaf, free from dust and stalk, and ready 
for retailing without trouble ou his part. Enterprising 
grocers in England have taken readily to the idea, and 
with success and fatisf action. The general tendency 
all over the United Kingdom is to buy blended teas."— 
Indian Tea Gazette. 
Leaf-Fungus in Ceylon. — In Part VII. of his 
paper on " Timber, and some of its Diseases," in 
Nature of July 19ih, Mr. H. Marshall Ward says: — 
It should be mentioned here, by the way, that all 
leaves of all trees are apt to have fungi on them in 
a wet summer, but many of these are only spreading 
their mycelia in all directions over the epidermis, in 
preparation, as it were, for the fall of the leaf: they 
are saprophytes which feed on the dead fallen leaves 
but cannot enter into them while yet alive. In some 
cases, however, this preparation for the fall is strikingly 
suggestive of adaptation towards becoming parasites, 
I will quote one instance only in illustration of this. 
On the leaves of certain trees in Ge.) Ion, there was 
always to be found in the rainy season the much- 
branched mycelium of a minute Splueria : this formed 
enormous numbers of branches,which on the older leaves 
were found to stop short over the stomata, and to 
form eventually a four-celled spore-like body just 
blocking up each stoma on which it rested. So long as 
the leaf remained living on the tree, nothing further 
occurred; but wherever a part of the leaf died, or when 
the leaf fell moribund on the ground, these spore-like 
bodies at once began to send hyphca into the dying 
tissue, and thus obtained an early place in the struggle 
for existence among the saprophytes which finished 
the destruction oi the cells and tissues of the k af, 
