504 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [December i, 1881. 
THE GOVERNMENT OP JAMAICA AND 
CINCHONA CULTIVATION. 
We learn that the Government of Jamaica having 
proved experimentally, the feasibility of growing cin. 
chona to good profit in the island, is now offering 
grants of public lands to private individuals who will 
embark in the enterprise. The spot chosen is on the 
Blue Mountains, some 50 miles from Kingston, in a 
delightful climate, free from extremes. The Govern- 
ment not only offers land, but supplies plants and 
seeds at a reasonable rate An ounce of seed, costing 
a guinea, will produce 20,000 seedlings, enough to 
plant 5 acres. Directions for raising and cultivating 
cinchonas have alrpady been published and circulated 
"by the Director of Plantations, Mr. D. Morris. The 
following are the conditions on which the Government 
will for the present make such grants : — 
" 1. The grantee shall pay to the Government before he 
enters into possession of the land as purchase-money for 
the concession to be made to him the sum of £ , 
being his bid at public auction at the upset rate of 2s an 
acre on the estimated acreage. 
" 2. The Government, while not requiring that a certain 
fixed amount of land be planted year by year, will look 
for immediate steps being taken to establish the cultiva- 
tion of Cinchona upon the land after the purchase-money 
has been paid. The grantee must, however, undertake that 
at the end of five years from the date of payment, he shall 
have cleared and planted with Cinchona a total extent of 
not less than one-sixth of the quantity of land actually 
granted to him, 
" 3. No timber shall be felled except on land about to 
be brought into cultivation. A certain quantity of timber 
may however, be cut down on other portions of the land, 
provided it is used solely in the erection of necessary 
buildings on the land itself. 
' ■ 4. The Government reserves the right to make public 
roads through the land to be granted without paying any 
compensation except for the value of Cinchona or other 
Valuable trees actually destroyed in the course of the work. 
"5. No land shall be cleared of forest within a distance 
of two chains from any spring or from the source or feeder 
of any stream, nor shall any land be cleared of forest 
within three chains of the centre of any prominent ridge 
or dividing line of watershed without written permission 
from the Director of the Public Gardens and Plantations. 
" 6. The land will be held by the grantee for the first 
five years on lease at a peppercorn rent If any of the 
conditions herein mentioned be broken the Government 
may resume possession of the land without compensation 
of any kind, and the purchase money will be forfeited. 
If the conditions be complied with a patent of the land 
wi 1 be given to the grantee at the end of five years free 
of urther cost, and the land will become his in fee 
simple, subject only to the reservation above mentioned 
in the rr.atter of roads. 
7. Questions that may arise as to the efiBciency of 
the cultivation established at any period, and as to the 
value of trees that might be destroynd in the construc- 
tion of roads, and as to the extent of land necessarily 
cleared, shall be decided by the Director of Public Gard- 
ens and Plantations. 
" 8. A diagram of the lot to be granted will be fur- 
nished from the office of the Surveyor-General, but any 
expenses that may be incurred for surveying or running 
the lines at the request of the grantee will be borne by 
the grantee. If the lines be run by the grantee a copy 
of the plan of the same should be sent to the office of 
Director of Roads and Surveyor- General for examination 
" 9. Intending applicants for the grant of land on 
these conditions should address themselves to the Director 
of Roads, by whom all requisite informations will be 
afforded . " — Go/rdnn ers' Chronicle. 
Coir Fibre. — At the Horrekelly Company's sale of 
coir fibre this afternoon the price realized was only 
R4 per cwt. 
Tea. — It is reported in China that the Russian 
trade in brick and fine tea in Central Asia, is now 
seriously interfered with by the Indian teas, which 
are preferred to China teas on account of their 
greater strength and flavour. The same may be said 
of the estimation in which Indian and China teas 
are held in England. The man or woman who has 
once taken to Indian tea will not return to the use 
of China tea, so long as Indian tea is to be had 
for love or money. — Madras Mail. 
Tea Planters will be sceptical of the reason given 
by a Times correspondent for the excellence of the 
Kiakhta or Caravan tea, imported into lluesia from 
the north of China. The tea comes overland, and 
its exquisite delicacy of flavour is attributed to its 
exposure to the air during the twelve mouths journey 
in loose and clumsy paper packets and sheepskin 
bundles, which rids it of tannin and other gross 
substances, a process of purification which cannot 
take place in the hermetically closed boxes in which 
the tea ordinarily reaches Europe by the sea route. 
This of course is only an opinion : we have heard 
and improving the flavour of tea by keeping. A chest 
of Indian tea that had accidentally got among the 
lumber was lost sight of for ten years. Those who 
quaffed the beverage brewed from this tea declared 
it exquisite. Indian tea planters, we fear, cannot 
afford to wait for ten years to improve their teas, 
and this advice to keep their produce, is not likely 
to be accepted. — South of India Observer. 
Indian Labour tor Fiji. — Once more the Govern- 
ment of Fiji have decided upon importing Indian 
coolie labour for the planters. But this time there is 
this important distinction, that the Indian coolies are 
not to be, so to say, forced upon the planters, as 
they were originally, but are requisitioned for by the 
planters themselves. All the same, whilst asking for 
coolies the planters are angry and dissatisfied at the 
necessity which makes them engage a class of labour, 
which they have good reason to dislike. But it is a 
case of coolie-labour or none at all for many of the 
plantations. A3 numerous requisitions have been sent 
in by the planters, there would seem to be every 
chance of our despatching a few hundreds of our surplus 
millions of half- starved agricultural labourers to a land, 
which will be, for them, flowing with milk and honey. 
It is to be hoped that on this occasion care will be 
taken to send none but men who are really agricul- 
turists ; and where there is so large a field to select 
from, it should not be difficult to get coolies of, com- 
paratively good physique. It is satisfactory to learn 
that the coffee plantations, which at one time seemed 
doomed owing to the leaf disease, are in a very flourish- 
ing condition, and bid fair to increase largely in ex- 
tent, and to prove amply remunerative. Recent ex- 
periences seem to show that the disease has not there 
the same disastrous effect it has in Ceylon ; and not- 
withstanding that some estates were attacked, the 
quantity exported last year was fifteen times as much 
as the quantity exported in 1879. The quantity of 
the berry is, morever, very well spoken of. On the 
whole it would appear that in a few years' time coffee- 
planting in Fiji will prove, perhaps, more remunerative 
than it: Ceylon, and that planters, forgetting the 
scurvy way in which they were treated by a former 
Government, will be attracted to islands which con- 
tain large areas of incomparably fine coffee land — out 
of the influence of the trade winds — that can be had 
on very moderate terms, whilst there is in the neigh- 
bouring colonies a large and yearly increasing market 
for the berry. When Mr. Horne, the Director of the 
Mauritius botanical gardens and forests, visited Fiji, 
in 1878, he estimated that the export value of coffee 
from the islands would before long attain to a million 
and a half, or to two millions sterling, — Pioneer. 
