THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[May r, 1882. 
from its present condition, and in extending the com- 
merce of the Eastern Archipelago, it will do good work. 
— British Trade Journal. 
BRAZILIAN REVIEW FOR 1881. 
During the year slavery, sapped by the Free Birth 
of 1871, by official emancipation, by the five fold more 
energetic operation of private benevolence, and by the 
silent but rapidly progressive action of death, con- 
tinued its accelerating march towards extinction. The 
year was also made notable by the prohibitory meas- 
ures, against the introduction of slaves, adopted by 
the central province?, measures \<.hich have practically 
destroyed the interprovincial trade in slaves, and by 
the open extra-legal popular opposition in Ceara against 
the obnoxious export. Moreover, the general sentim- 
ent of the cities appears favourable to a revision of 
the law of 1871, with the object of hastening the 
happy day when Brazil will have shaken off the 
shackles of her inherited curse of domestic slavery. 
[The Bio News gives a far less creditable account 
of the slavery question and the state of public opinion 
in regard to it. — Ed.] 
Agriculture during the past year was prosperous, 
the crops of our main staples, coffee and sugar, being 
considerably beyond the average. Unfortunately, the 
low prices of coffee gravely diminished the receipts of 
coffee planters, affected trade generally, and curtailed 
the Government collections from that chief source of 
export revenue. The cattle industry of the south con- 
tinued in its decline, and grave losses occurred in 
Rio Grande do Sul through droughts which prevailed 
during the early part of the year. But the extractive 
industries* of the Amazonian valley proceeded in an 
ascendant march throughout the year, extending their 
arms widly into rich and virgin fields of exploration. 
Of the finances of the country we are as yet without 
definite information, no meeting of parliament having 
led to the customary publication of official returns. 
But on the whole, the revenue collections are likely 
to have exceeded the estimates, inasmuch as, though 
the receipts of the Southern provinces have at best 
been stationary, from the causes already touched upon, 
those from the northern half of the Empire will 
undoubtedly show a considerable increase. Economy 
has also been the order of the day in the " ordinary" 
expenditures, and we shall not be surprized to rind 
in tbe coming exposition of the Ministry of Finance 
that Senor Saraiva has already attained his desideratum 
of a balanced ordinary expenditure and income, not- 
withstanding the rather considerable increase in the 
former by the depreciation of exchange and by the 
interest on the floating debt, incurred chiefly for the 
service of the Government works of internal improve- 
ment in hand, and in part for the acquisition of naval 
and military material in view of the increasing ar- 
maments of the Argentine nation. 
[Then follow long details of a wonderful series of 
railway lines which will open up 'he Empire,] 
Taken in all, the various lines in traffic fall little 
shoit of 7,000 kilometers and many hundreds of 
kilometers more are in a condition of advanced con- 
Btruction. — South American Journal. 
Artificial India-rubber promises to be soon a 
fact. Bouchardat has found a compound by treating 
isoprene (C 5 H 8 ) with hydrochloric acid that has all 
the properties of rubber. — Chermst and Druggist. [We 
have no fear of artificial rubber any more than of 
artificial quinine — Ed.] 
•Extractive industries " ? We suspect that not min- 
ing India but rubber collecting and similar pursuits are 
referred to. — Ed, 
A Rhea Machine. — The Government of ludia have 
asked the Secretary of State, to send out to this 
country a rhea machine, by Messrs. Mar in, Dennis 
and Albert Angell, for the preparation of the fibre of 
jute, for the use of the Government experimental farms, 
as soon as the machine can be procured — Madras Mail. 
Indian Tobacco. — All interested in the growth of 
tobacco in India will be glad to learn that a late 
shipment of thirty tierces of Pusa tobacco to London 
has been pronounced by the experts, both merchants 
and brokers, to be of excellent quality, fully equal 
to American, and that good prices were realized. — 
Calcutta Englishman. 
White Bug on Cinchona. — Mr. Smith of Mattakelle 
has sent us a number of cuttings of cinchona (?) 
branches and stems terribly "bugged" (with 
white bug), but the stems are also freely covered 
with the larvae of the lady-birds which have been 
feeding on the bug and which will no doubt do much 
to clear off the enemy. 
Water. — In seeking for a substance which would 
destroy the microscopic t animals in water without 
injuring it for drinking purposes, Dr.Langfeldt found 
that citric acid (one half gramme to every litre of 
the water) killed all the living organisms, except 
cyclops and those with thick epidermis, within two 
minutes. — Chemist and Druggist. 
The Bark Speculation. — The principal of the Milan 
Quioine Works writes to the Pharm : Zeitung, 
to contradict a statement which had appeared in 
that journal to the effect that that firm and a few 
German houses had formed a syndicate to buy up a 
large part of the London stock of bark, with the 
object of forcing up the price. He says:— "The 
present advance is the exclusive work of a London 
import house, and we have in no way shared in it. 
On tbe contrary, we consider it ruinous to the trade, 
if the article should fall into the hands of speculators, 
and we believe it is the interest of all manufacturers 
to prevent, so far as possible, all such arbitrary ad- 
vance or depression in the price occasioned by specu- 
lation." — Chemist and Druggist. 
Consumption of Coffee. — It is generally thought 
in England that the French are the greatest con- 
sumers of coffee, but it appears that this is far from 
being the case. From reliable statistics we learn that in 
England, in spite of the great consumption of tea, every 
person consumes 1J lb of coffee every year, in Germ/my 
the average consumption is 4 lb a year, in Denmark 5£ 
lb, in Switzerland 6 lb, in Belgium 8£ lb, in Hollaed 10§ 
lb, in the United States 7£ lb, whilst in France it is 
only 2| lb. With the exception therefore of England, 
there is less coffee consumed in France than in any of 
the other countries above-mentioned ; the highest 
average, however, is found in California, where 20J lb 
are consumed per annum — La Patrie. [The consump- 
tion of coffee in England now is less than one lb per 
head per annum! — Ed.] 
The Santos Coffee Crop damaged by Rain. — 
The Provincia de Sao Paulo of the 4th Feb- extracts 
the following from a private letter written by a planter 
in the interior of Sao Paulo : — " The continued rains, 
often torrential, are injuring, in a discouraging manner, 
the next future crop of coffee. For more than thirty 
days the rain has not stopped, there resulting from 
such continued humidity the rotting of the peduncle 
of the coffee fruit and, in consequence, its destruc- 
tion. We have seen coffee orchards strewn with fruit, 
in great part nearly matured, and beside ihat the fall 
of these had been caused not only from the trees most 
loaded, but also from those where the fruit is scarce. 
If the weather does not improve shortly, g eat, very 
great will be the loss of the cultivators of our already 
too greatly depreciated product," — Bio News, 
