86o 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[April i, 1882. 
Consul- General at Shanghai, has been deputed by the 
Association to proceed to Borneo and China, with the 
view of organising the Chinese Labour Department for 
Emigration to Borneo. The very term " colony " is an 
anomaly. No Chinese ever colonise, in the proper sense 
of that word; they bring labour, and nothing more, 
abstracting all they can from any country to which 
they are taken, never spending their earnings in it, and 
going home with their gains, alive or dead. — Field. 
ARBORICULTURE IN THE NORTH-WEST 
PROVINCES AND OF INDIA. 
We have now before us the report on the agricult- 
ural operations in the North-West Provinces and Oudh 
for last year, and this enables us to form an estimate 
of what' has been and is being done. Planting trees 
along the sides of roads has been steadily earned on, 
though we are not by any means sure that this is bene- 
ficial for the roads themselves, however pleasant it may 
be for the travellers along the roads. With the general 
operations we do not propose to deal, but only with the 
subjects specially noticed in tbe report. And first as to 
nurseries: — "When Mr. Buck first took charge of the 
arboriculture! operations, he found that a large number 
of nurseries was kept up at a greater cost than the 
grant could properly afford. The difficulties in the way 
of an efficient supervision were insuperable, and it was 
almost impossible to procure malis with adequate know- 
ledge of the work. He therefore recommended that their 
number should be reduced as far as possible. Mr. Howe, 
the Collector of Etawah, writes this year: 'lam decid- 
edly of the opinion that the nurseries at the tahsils are 
a mistake. They are far from supervision, unless the 
tahsildar happens to have a special interest in the work, 
which is seldom the case. The past history of the nur- 
series shows them to be almost entire failures. I think 
it would be better to have one central nursery at the 
public gardens, under the management of the officer in 
charge. Similarly Mr. Twigg of Hamirpore found all the 
plant in his nurseries either overgrown or non-existent.' 
There are, however, objections to concentrating the 
nursery operations at the Sudder station. The Deputy 
Commissioner of Lalitpur writes : ' A glance at the map 
of the district will show, as I found before we had well 
taken the matter in hand, that a central nursery at 
Mahroni will be useless, as young trees will not bear 
carrying from Mahroni to Talbehat, a distance of 50 
miles. I therefore established branch nurseries at Tal- 
behat, Bansi, and Birdha, which are kept up at a very 
small cost, and have proved a success.' Cost of carnage 
is such a heavy charge that, as a matter of fact, local 
nurseries are far more economical than nurseries at head- 
quarters, if only they are properly managed; but this 
constitutes the real difficulty. The whole question of 
nurseries seems at present to be in much haze, which 
can only be dispelled by practical experience. It is a 
subject which deserves the careful attention of district 
officers. 
Different means of solving the difficulty have been 
suggested. Mr. Reid, the Collector of Bareilly, writes : 
' It has been found a cheap and easily worked plan to 
let the tahsildars, whose roads are beyond the reach of 
the head-quarters nursery, procure, by purchase or other- 
wise, such trees as they require. They seem to have no 
difficulty in procuring suitable plants. Mr. Wyer at 
Azamgarh has adopted a slightly different plan with 
apparent success. ' Twenty-five roadside-nurseries,' he 
writes, 'have been established, and are maintained free 
of expense by zemindars and others interested in arbori- 
culture. As all those who have established nurseries 
will make use of many of the seedlings for planting out 
on their own land, they have most willingly undertaken 
the work and appear to take great interest in it.' The 
suggestion to buy young trees from private growers apj- 
pears to be a very valuable one so long as attention is 
paid to the selection of strong and healthy plants. They 
can be grown at infinitely less cost by cultivators, who 
supply then' own supervision and have an interest in the 
success of the plantation, than by any Government officer. 
It is believed that native zakiras, where young mangoes 
and other useful trees are grown, can be found in most 
places. The Ramgarh nursery, under the charge of Mr, 
Campbell of the Forest Department, seems to have an- 
swered the purpose of supplying the distriet roads of 
Gorakpur. Mr. Campbell says that it was found possible 
entirely to eradicate kans grass by planting out pine- 
apple seedlings. Graft mangoes were imported from 
Lucknow and Saharanpur, and are doing well. A large 
number of jack seedlings (20,000) were reared, but were 
almost all destroyed. Hopes are entertained of better 
success from rearing them in hollow bamboos instead of 
in the ordinary way. It may, however, be remarked, as 
a common result of native experience, that jacks stand 
transplanting worse than almost any other trees, and 
that it is usually cheaper and safer to sow them in situ, 
where they are wanted, putting in a sufficient number of 
seeds to admit of selection and subsequent thinning out. 
Inga dulcis though it thrives generally in the district, 
altogether failed in the nursery." 
The Lieutenant-Governor remarks that the " co-oper- 
ation of residents along the roads is to be desired above 
all things, inasmuch as while the expenses of planting 
and maintenance are thereby saved or reduced, the per- 
sonal interest taken by the planter of the tree in its 
welfare is likely to produce better results than is possi- 
ble from the superintendence of overworked officials." 
And this is the real system at all attempts at refor- 
estation in this country. — Asian. 
ELECTRO-HORTICULTURE. 
At the recent meeting of the British Association, Dr. 
Siemens read an address on Electric Energy : — 
On the 1st of March, 1880, I communicated to the 
Royal Society a paper " On the Influence of Electric 
Light upon Vegetation, &c," in which I arrived at the 
conclusion that electric light was capable of producing 
upon plants effects comparable to those of solar radi- 
ation ; that chlorophyl was produced by it, and that 
bloom and fruit rich in aroma and colour could be 
developed by its aid. My experiments also went to 
prove that plants do not, as a rule, require a period 
of rest during the 24 hours of the day, but make in- 
creased and vigorous progress if subjected in winter 
time to solar light during the day and to electric light 
during the night. During the whole of last winter I 
continued my experiments on an enlarged scale, and it 
is my present purpose to give a short account of these 
experiments and of some further applications of electric 
energy to farming operations (mcluding the pumping 
of water, the sawing of timber, and chaff and root 
cutting) at various distances not exceeding half a mile 
from the source of power, giving useful employment 
during the day-time to the powder-producting machinery, 
and thus reducing indirectly the cost of the light during 
the night-time. The arrangement consists of a high- 
pressure steam-engine of 6-horse power nominal, sup- 
plied by Messrs. Tangye Brothers, which gives motion 
to two dynamo machines (Siemens D.) connected separ- 
ately to two electric lamps, each capable of emitting a 
light of about 4,000 candle power. One of these lamps 
was placed inside a glasshouse of 2,318 cubic feet 
capacity, and the other was suspended at a height of 
12 to 14 feet over some sunk greenhouses. The waste 
steam of the engine was condensed in a heater, whence 
the greenhouses take their circulating supply of hot 
water, thus saving the fuel that would otherwise be 
required to heat the stoves. The experiments were 
commenced on the 23rd of October, 1880, and were 
continued till the 7th of May, 1881. The general plan 
of operation consisted in lighting the electric lights »t 
