April i, 1889.] THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
719 
full weight and good measure of ginger. Pimento is 
too cheap to make adulteration profitable. Nutmegs 
have never been adulterated except in Connecticut, 
where a very successful imitation is said to have 
been made many years ago by some of the thrifty 
deacons who happened to keep country stores. 
There are no wooden nutmegs now in market- Cloves 
are adulterated with clove-stems, which are very cheap. 
At one time they cost only one and a-half cents a 
pound at wholesale. Mustard is adulterated with 
flour and tumeric, which is yellow in color, and 
gives it its pungent taste. Tumeric itself is the root of 
a plant found in the Bast Indies and in Cochin China. 
It is sold in the form of dried root or powder, and 
besides being used so extensively in coloring mustard, 
it is employed in the dyeing of silks and wool, as 
well as in medicine and chemical analyses. As ori- 
ginally used in Europe, mustard was simply the finely 
ground seed, but in time a demand arose for an im- 
proved yellow color, the natural tint being rather dull 
and unattractive, and then the flour of mustard was 
introduced, this merely being the interior portion of 
the seed, the bran being rejected as in the case of 
wheat in making flour. The result was a loss of the 
pungent taste peculiar to mustard, which is largely 
due to the presence of a bitterish oil in the husk 
of the seed, and to supply this deficiency the next 
step was to introduce tumeric, Cayenne pepper and 
other foreign ingredients, with wheat flour to increase 
the bulk and lightness of color. There, is little or 
no pure mustard to be had anywhere; it is practi- 
cally a druggist's compound, and in New York 
mustard-seed is sold by drug brokers. 
But the shipping element of the mighty commerce 
of New York is always move interesting than its 
forma) array of statistics. Here at a wharf on the 
East Kiver, near old Rutgers Slip, is a ship with big 
tan-colored spars and a brave array of rigging, pulleys, 
ratlines, cordage, chains and white decks. Her sides 
are harked and rusty with the long voyage from 
Hong Kong. A companionway is lowered to the 
wharf, and a notice close by announces that there 
is no admitance to the ship, though this warning is 
but slightly regarded. A queer little floating house 
on one side -of the ship contains the steam winch, 
by which the cargo is hoisted from the depths of 
the sombre hold to a slanting skid, down which the 
merchandise is sent to a platform supported by 
wooden horses. From thej platform the men take the 
bales of rich goods and pile them up, according to 
their marks, further along the wharf, or else put 
them on trucks to be taken to various parts of the 
city. On the dusty and splintered wharf are hales 
of cassia, bags of ginger, boxes of preservec, china- 
ware, rattans and curios, bales of straw braid and 
rolls of matting, bearing such labels as "Kce Ning," 
"Hong Kong Fancy" and "Mandarin," packed in 
bales of native grass. There are boxes of soys, a 
kind of sauce or flavoring made in China from a 
small native bean ; there are cases of lacquerware, 
such as cups, saucers, trays, pots and dishes. The 
cargo contains no less than 500 cases of native pre- 
serves, and nearly 5,000 pounds of ginger. There is 
chinaware consigned to a Chinese firm in New York, 
LiD, Fong & Co. besides rattan chairs. In all, the 
big ship will yield up more than 18,000 rolls of the 
matting, which is so much neater and better than 
carpets for certain rooms of the dwelling, and so 
much superior to the cheaper carpets or the chilling 
oilcloth for halls. Big red trucks are being loaded 
with this merchandise from the far East, and every 
few minutes a team of stout horses, with flanks 
and harness glistening in the afternoon sun, rumble 
along the wharf out into noisy South street, where 
the stout lunged driver is speedily reveling in wordy 
and profane warfare with the driver of a horseear, 
whose observations on the truckman's parentage, 
physical appearance and mental characteristics call 
forth a vituperative debtee in response from that 
maligned but fluent individual. Truckmen, as a class, 
are probably the same all the world over, as profane 
and abusive at times as parrots with a bad 
" bringing up." 
Most of the steamers in the East Indian trade 
take their cargoes to London or Liverpool, and 
consignments for America are there transhipped in 
the regular steamers plying to New York. A new 
line of steamers between New York and Calcutta 
was established some months ago, and cargoes of 
East Indian merchandise are now more frequently 
brought hither direct. Some of these steamers 
also go to Bombay, Madras and Colombo in Ceylon. 
Thev bring cinnamon, ginger, coffee, indigo, jute, 
cinchona bark and other products. Seven steamers 
of 4,000 tons each are in the trade. They 
usually make the trip Ifroru Calcutta to New 
York in about thirty-five days, though occasionally it 
takes longer. The steamers have a great advantage 
in this trade, as they always go and come by way of 
the Suez Canal, that wonderful engineering feat 
that connects the Red Sea with the Mediterra nean, 
whereas the sailing vessels, by reason of the high 
tolls on the canal, are obliged to go around by the 
Cape of Good Hope — certainly a commercial misnomer 
in this case. Every Anchor Line steamer pays four 
hundred pounds sterling or two thousand dollars, to 
go through te India, and the same amount coming 
back, making four thousand dollars in canal tolls 
for the round trip. The famous Peninsula and Oriental 
pay even more — four thousand dollars each way. 
" There is one interesting fact about the spice trade,"' 
said a large importer, "and that is, the consumption 
of spices is increasing in this country out of all pro- 
portion to the increase of , population. This is true 
not only of the staple spices, but of all kinds of fancy 
condiments. The increasing wealth of the country 
accounts for the enormous demand. Another thing : 
it would be a very important matter to us if the 
Prohibitionists should be more generally successful. 
In States where the Prohibitionists have the strongest 
hold, it is a curious fact that the consumption of 
spices is proportionately the largest. There is a 
certain class of persons who are determined to have 
some to warm them up." — Frank Leslie's Popular 
Monthly. 
Coffee in South India. — It is stated that the 
quality of last year's plantation coffee, sent to the 
London market, with " Coonoor" and " Nilgiri" 
marks, is spoken of as having been superior to 
the generality of Wynaad coffee ; the compara- 
tively inferior quality of the latter being attributed 
to exceptional circumstances, such as unfavourable 
weather for picking, and the setting in of the 
monsoon on the Malabar coast, before many of the 
crops could be shipped. Fortunately the demand 
for coffee at home, has been good for almost all 
kinds, and high prices have been realised. — South of 
India Observer, Feb. 28th. 
The Aloe and its Uses. — A few years ago 
the discovery was reported in these columns of the 
singular property which the juice of the Mexican 
Agave plant has of half-digesting meat, or of convert- 
ing it into peptone, and it was pointed out at the time 
how valuable from a commercial point of view would 
be this cheap and cleanly method of peptonizing, 
compared to the ordinary methods of extracting the 
peptonizing ferment from the stomachs of pigs and 
other animals. The discoverer, M. Marcano, announces 
that the method has been in industrial use in Vene- 
zuela by pharmacists for three years, during which 
it has worked perfectly. Fie finds now that if tho 
crushed tissue of the leaves is added, as well as the 
juice, the whole process can be completed at blood 
heat in six hours, insisted of 36, as it takes with 
the juice alone. The discovery is a very singular 
one, and one which ought to have received more 
attention from physiologists and physicians than it 
has so far. It is quite remarkable that the cells 
of the clumsy Mexican plant should be able to per- 
form so easily the most important function of tho 
human stomach, — AtustraUssiaH. 
