35° 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [November i, 1888. 
China Teas. — A Ceylon planter now at home sends 
us the following extract from a homn paper :— '• The 
rapid decline of our trade in tea with China, owing to 
the increasing hold which the teas of India and Ceylon 
are obtaining on this country, has at length begun to 
arouse the attention of the Chinese growers and 
shippers. The exports from China to London up to 
the 11th of August of this year are stated to have 
been 59,000,000 lb. as against 91,000,000 lb. in the cor- 
responding period of four years ago. This heavy falling 
off is mainly attributable to the export duties levied 
on tea leaving China, whilst the rival teas of India 
and Ceylon are free of such imposts. A Trade Com- 
mittee of Inquiry acting with the Shanghai and Foo- 
Chow Chambers of Commerce has recently expressed 
an opinion ' that the only real remedy for preventing 
the total extinction of the trade is the abolition of all 
export duties, so that the China article may be on the 
same footing with the Indian, Ceylon, and Java, all of 
which are now free from tax.' The quality of some of 
the recent arrivals of black leaf teas of congou and 
souchong descriptions has been very poor and fetched 
very low prices." 
Bulling Quinine, — A letter appeared in a finan- 
cial contemporary on the position of this 
quinine, in which investors are tempted by brilliant 
representations of the money to be made in the 
article. The reasons advanced by the anonymous 
correspondent are not likely to influence people 
posted in the past history of quinine ; but it 
would be a pity if it had the effect of " landing" 
any of the numerous class of investors who run 
after supposed good things even though they know 
next to nothing about them. The Ceylon estimates 
of cultivated bark area and future exports, upon 
which the writer largely bases his arguments, 
have more than once proved unreliable ; and as a 
matter of fact the compilers of these returns them- 
selves acknowledge, in the Ceylon papers to hand 
by this week's mail, that they have wrongly esti- 
mated the very number of growing trees upon which 
the letter-writer bases his calculations. Similar 
innocent-looking attempts at bulling the market 
were made last autumn, and paraded with much 
show of satisfaction by speculators. — Chemist and 
Drugc/ist, September 29th. 
TteAS and Teas ! — Already we learn there 
are anticipations abroad of a poor time coming 
for Ceylon teas. We cannot see it ourselves just 
yet, with Indian exports below the estimate so 
much, the China returns showing no sign of re- 
cuperation, and our own deficiency on estimates. But 
already dealers are scenting afar off the time 
when " Ceylons '' are to be poor again, due to " newly 
pruned teas." Surely it is too early to begin this 
cry, and in view of so many plantations now 
doing their pruning by instalments all the_ year 
round, save in the very dry months, it will be 
rather difficult to distinguish the period for poor 
teas and depressed prices. In this connection, we 
cannot help recording the experience of a Bak- 
wana proprietor, who, for some time, was con- 
scientious enough to place " N. P." (" newly 
pruned ") on the boxes containing his first teas 
after pruning, with the result, as soon as the 
mystic letters were explained in the Lane, of 
considerably less prices. Latterly, however, he has 
given up this practice, and he says his " newly 
pruned teas" now fetch quite as much as any 
others from his property. Once again, a Dimbula 
proprietor making up a sample package of a break 
of tea, per post, found three packets (a triangular 
affair) rather awkward for the tappal, and so added a 
fourth, taking the tea from the same bulk as one of 
tho others, but forgetting so to label this 4th package, 
lie had a very good report from the Lane on 
his three marked samples, but the 4th (unmarked 
but really a duplicate) package was condemned as 
burnt and inferior I 
Tea in Bumiah. — The Mandalay Herald trusts the 
general success that has attended lea culture in Upper 
Burma will attract those who have been forestalled 
in Assam, India, and C&ylon. " We have the climate, 
soil, and temperature, and millions of acres in Upper 
Burma that are offering themselves to the planter, 
if he will only go to them and use them. All that is 
required, is that authoritative publicity should be 
given to what the local Government has to offer to 
planters and others." 
Cheap Sulphate of Quinine. — A few months 
ago we published details of a process adopted by 
Mr. Gammie of the Government cinchona gardens 
in Sikkirn for making sulphate of quinine cheaply, 
by means of caustic soda and fusel and kerosene 
oils. At our request, Mr. Gammie sent us a box 
containing the various ingredients required, and 
we handed them to Mr. Cochran, who has kindly 
made some sulphate by this process, which is a 
somewhat troublesome one in the absence of 
the apparatus used for shaking the materials up. 
The specimen before us took a boy five hours to 
shake up 1 It is a very nice looking sample, and 
we do not see why a regular manufactory should 
not be started in Colombo, for supplying the local 
market at any rate. The specimen referred to can 
be seen at this office. 
Coffee. — We are now asked to give up coffee. A 
writer in The North American Review dogmatically 
asserts that it produces blindness and all sorts of 
mischief besides, and turns a growing lad into a 
"runt" — whatever that maybe. He declares that 
what he says is based on his own experience. He 
had good eyes, and needed them for his trade ; but 
his sight was nearly ruined by copious-coffee. " A 
horror of darkness " set in, and he longed to get to 
some place where there were short nights — or, as we 
should say, long days — all the year round. But many 
people who were not intemperate coffee-drinkers have 
been known to express the same wish. The writer 
warms to his subject as he gets on, till in time we 
learn that " Coffee-drinking exhausts the mouth and 
throat, leaving the face a grinning skeleton, while 
the body is honoy combed." This beats anything we 
have heard of whisky ! She will be a brave woman 
who sips the aromatic herb in the teeth of this 
" grinning skeleton." Perhaps, however, the writer 
did not take his coffee " neat." The worst of it is, 
he has not told us what we are to drink. — Cltriatian 
World, Sept. 20th. 
An " Aeboe Day. " foe Ceylon. — " With a view 
to remedying the waste caused by the reckless cutting- 
down of trees, a voluntary tree-planting movement 
was begun in the State of Nebraska about fifteen 
years ago. One day in every year was set apart 
for the business, and called ' Arbor Day,' and 
that day local authorities, notabilities, and people 
in general celebrate by planting trees. The example 
has been followed by several other of the Western 
States, with the result that a considerable territory 
has been reafforested. The success which has 
attended ' Arbor Day' in America makes one 
wonder whether, like so many other Transatlantic 
products, it would bear transplantation to this 
country." So writes the London Graphic ; and 
could not something of the kind be attempted in 
Ceylon in connection with fruit-trees. Dr. Kilner 
many years ago advocated a toll on our great 
North-road in the shape of each traveller being 
obliged to carry and place in the soil at proper 
intervals a few palmyra-palm seeds. Had this 
been begun thirty years ago, the road from the 
Jaffna Peninsula to Matale might be lined with 
this hardy and useful palm by this time. Could 
not the boys of Mission and indeed Government 
schools be interested in an " arbor " or "fruit- 
tree" day ? 
