3x6 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [September 
indicated by the points at the ends of the dotted 
lines a a of the seion and stock, should be placed 
in contact, th e parts secured by tying with matting 
or other material, and surrounded with clay, grafting 
■wax, or other substances, to exclude the air and wet. 
" Saddle-grafting. — This is represented by figure 3. 
It cannot be well performed except when the stock 
and scion- are <i nearly equal thickness. The stock 
A is cut sloping on both sides like a wedge termin- 
ating at c. The scion b is split up the centre, and 
each half is thinned to make it fit astride the wedge- 
like end of the stock. A thin, narrow-bladed knife 
should be employed for this purpose. The inner bark 
of the fcion and stock having been nvide to coincide 
as nearly as possible, the parts should be secured by 
a ligature and covered with some grafting composition. 
" This mode of grafting is liable to some objec- 
tions. Unless the scion is cut out without splitting, 
there must be a rent, as from c to d, which will 
never unite, and is even liable to open and form a 
blemish. The operation requires more time to perform 
than whip-grafting, and, as already observed, it can- 
not be well employed unless the stock is nearly of 
the same size as the scion, for, supposing the siock 
to be £ in. in diameter, and the scion only £ in., the 
inner bark might be joined at the lower part, but 
could not possibly be so at the thinned edge at the 
top of the stock ; on the contrary, \ in. of the wood 
must be there uncovered by the scion." 
In our next the practice of cleft, notch, and crown 
grafting will be described. 
Cinchona in West Africa. — Under the auspices 
of the Livingstone Expedition, the cultivation of the 
various species of cinchona is to be tried in the moun- 
tain valleys of the Congo. 
Tea Fermentation. — A simple and practical way to 
make all your leaf ferment evenly, is to sift it with a half 
inch (mers) sieve immediately after the final rolling, 
and it will ba found that about 4 per cent, of ordin- 
arily rolled leaf will have fallen through; put this 
into your fermenting trays, but in a separate line to 
the coar.-er leaf, which has not gone through the sieve, 
and when ready for opening out (which will vary 
from a quarter to three-quarters of an hour before the 
other) keep and dry it separate, as it will also take 
less time to dry than the harder ; one man can easily 
sift 12 mds. per hour, i. e., by having the sieve 
suspended from some support to enable him to use 
it somewhat after the motion or action of Jackson's 
sifting machine, which is by the way something like 
his dryer.—/. T. Gazelt". 
Tea Pruning, its connection with Red Spider. —I 
-have noted that the bushes pruned in December and Janu- 
ary, became dry in the outer bark from long expo ure 
to the sun, and were soon affected with spider ; those 
pruned in February and March, before the bushes 
began to put out new shoots, escaped spider ; while 
those pruned after the new shoots sprung, were 
coveed with spider. On blocks of tea at different ends 
of the garden, the early pruned parts were brown, 
the later pruned parts green, and only half the bushes 
in a few of the intervening rows were touched with 
spider. Red spider wastes about an eighth of the 
crop, and reduces the quality of the tea for the 
season. Trusting these remarks may elicit some further 
practical information on the subject. — /. T, Gazette. 
Pap/lR Materials. — From time to time appear in 
the periodicals notices of some new material like 
Hanana fibre, Bamboo shoots, Blue-grass, and the 
like, which have all in common the same grave defect 
— the necessity of special cultivation, and therefore 
I have never soen anything to come out of them ex- 
cept hobbies for benevolent and sanguine persons to 
trot out. But from the trade returns of India it 
appears that h'lax must be grown exfceusiveJy in the 
north-west, and that the Linseed alone is saved. 
What becomes of the stalks ? By steaming and treating 
them with alkaline washes, or by some other of the 
many patented processes for disengaging the fibre 
from the gum and the bark, will it not be. po-sible 
to convert that miss of refuse material into paper 
pulp, if not into fibre fit to be spun ?-has it ever 
been proposed or tried? I could say the same of 
the twigs of the silk Mulberry, the bark of which is 
one of the various materials used in making the tou«h 
paper of Japan, though less generally than that of ihe 
paper Mulberry (Broussoneth) or the Edgeworthia 
papynfera. Any quantity of Mulberry twigs could 
be had in the south of France and Lombardy, where 
those cuttings are used only as household fuel. Suitable 
spots with an abundance of good water could be 
found m those countries for establishing the works 
— F. Van Volxem.— Gardeners' Chronicle. 
Tobaccos.— Should the report that the Spanish Go- 
vernment is about to discontinue the tobacco mono- 
poly in the Philippine Islands prove true, one of the 
closest and most strictly enforced monopolies that ever 
existed will be put an end to. The production of 
the Manilla cheroot was fenced about with protective 
regulations even fro n before the moment that the 
tobacco seed wns put into the ground almost until 
that at which it was placed between the lips of the 
smoker. Some land in the Island of Lucon being 
belter suited to the cultivation of the plant than others, 
all owners and occupiers of property in certain dis- 
tricts had to see that a proportion of their land un- 
der cultivation— the amount being regulated by the 
Government— was devoted to growing tobacco. The 
kind of seed sown and the mode of rearing the plants 
were closely supervised by the authorities. The pro- 
duct of the harvest could be purchased only by the 
Government ; and no one else could manufacture it 
into cigars or cheroots. No unmanufactured to acco 
could be sold even for exportation, unless it were to 
be carried beyond the Cape of Good Hope — a regula- 
tion made to prevent the starting of a rival manu- 
facture at Macao or Hong Kong. The factories 
of Manilla and Cavite are immense establishments. 
Every visitor to the former city must have been 
struck by the crowds of "hands" — chiefly Tagal wo- 
men and girls— which stream out of their gates at the 
close of the working hours. Their interest in the 
proposed change must be considerable. The system 
pursued in Cubi has long been altogether different. 
The vega<i or tobacco farms of the celebrated Vuelta 
Abajo — the region in which the finest tobaccos are 
grown — are usually small holdings cultivated chiefly, 
if not entirely, by white men. Slave labour in Cuba 
has had little to do with the production of at least 
the raw material of the celebrated Havana cigars, 
but was principally employed on the great sugar es- 
tates. The cultivation of the plant, free as it is, is not 
more so than the manufacture of the cigars and cigar- 
ettes. Though the huge factories of Manilla are not 
to bo found at Havana, a remarkable change in the 
system of cigar making has taken place within the 
last five-andtwenty years. At the beginning of that 
period the small factories were many in number ; some 
streets— notably the Calle del Sol and the Calle Obispo 
— were lined with little shops, in which might be 
seen some half-a dozen White Creoles vigorously smoking 
and rolling cigars. Some years later these had nearly 
all disappeared, and the manufacture hid apparently 
passed into the hands of large firms, with manufact- 
uring establishments of considerable size. The great 
cigarette works of La Honradez were one of the sights 
of the city. Though perhaps not even those whose 
Eastern experiences tend to preserve plecsant, recol- 
lections of the Manilla plant will dispute the superi- 
ority of an Havana, it is worth remembering that 
the former was, and indeed is, by a long way the 
cheaper.— Pall Mall Budget. 
