August i, 1893.] THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
T17 
high position in averages are now low down in the 
list. I might name several of the?e, bat refrain 
from dr-iog 6o, not wishing to S'"t in juc'gment on 
the qaal'.ty ot any particuUr outturn ot leaf, nor is 
it nece'isary I should do so. as the fact must be 
too well-known to need illustration. There are now 
Broken Pekoes and Broken Orange Pekoea coming 
to market and selling for S3, which early in last 
year or the year before realized Is 6.1 or more, 
The teas shew no infpr.ority of make : there is no 
fault to lay at the factory door, for they are iu 
appearance as gooi as ever they were ; bat the old. 
quality is not there. It is useless to continue to 
live in a fool's paradi-e and delude ourselves with 
the belief that (Jeylon planters can make as good 
tea as ever. They cmnot, and the fault does not 
lie with them. It is not a question of fine or coar?e 
plucking, of careful or indifferent make ; the leaf is 
Eo longer the same ; it h'ss lost the old malty 
flivour — so =oft and so fragrant — which was formerly 
the feature of yciir high-grown teas. i\ow all 
this has left them, and they come out in the cup 
B weak, wa*hy liquor tasting of nothing in particular. 
My object m putting all this before your readers is 
to lead them to tumk the subject out and take 
action. There is no doubt that some element which 
formerly was in the soil, and which gave high- 
grown teas their fine delicate flavour, is now absent 
and the course to be adopted is to my mind, to 
obtain the strvicss of a high'y-quilitied chemist for 
a term of yeirs, whose duty it suall be to determine 
what steps are necessary to return to the sail the 
element of which it is deicient. Ceylon is spending 
£20,000 to open a market for its tea in America, 
Is it not worth while to spend a few thousands in 
ma ntaining existing markets by improving the 
quality of your teis ? It was thought at one time 
that Ceylon had a great advantage over other tea 
prodnciog countries in that the bush could be 
plucked throughout the year. May not tbis be a 
disadvanta^^e ! May it not be possible to give the 
bush an artificial rest, and so help to improve 
quality ? These are questions that may te worth 
considering. What is taking place with high-grown 
tea from crack estates happened to my knorvledge 
thirty years ago with high-grown coffee ; so long as 
tbe.re were certain elements in the Bo:l on which the 
ociffee basti could feed high-grown coffee from the 
Ramboda, Pussellawa, Maturata and Upper 
Hewihela districts fetched in the London marliet 
20s p-r owt. mors thin coffee from Kurunegala, 
Dolosbage and such distrijts; but in time this 
advantage disappeared, for the reason that the 
element in quistion had become exhausted. It nvj.st 
have been so '. 
On the above the local editor remarks aa follows: — 
The position taken up by onr London correspondent 
on this subject is not lively to commend itself to 
Oeylon planters, nor do we think it tenable. It 
may be perfectly true that certain estate teas which 
once fetched a high, r price in the London market no 
lot ger do so. But why is this ? It ia because they 
ara rece ving less for ttie same class of tea made from 
the s»me cliss of leaf as before, or because they 
are making common teas in larger quantities. We 
belieTe tLat, if our London correspondent makes 
due inquiry, ha will find the latter to be the caie. 
The real test after all is this : Are the estates he 
refers to paying better now, when they are receiving 
poor prices tor their teas, than before, when they 
obtained higher prices ? if the answer is that they 
are doing better now than before all the talk about 
" deterioration " will not alter the mode of manufao- 
ture now pursued. For ourselves we belieye that, 
given only the stimului of high prices for really fine 
teis, and Oeylon wjuld produce a larger number of 
redliy stiud oat " iull-fia7ored teas than ever 
before. But inducement must first be offered, and 
the remedy doss not wholly lie in the hands of 
p aiiterj. 
Bat we think most readers will a3ree with us that 
if only to aatisly oritioism, there ought to be a 
P, A., i( not a soieatifio, iu(juiry, 
THE ZANZIBAR CLOVE -CROP. 
The 2-5 per cent ad, valoreni export dnty on cloves 
con--titnte? the chief part of the revenue of Zanzibar, 
This duty, siys ttie British Consul, is always 
collected in kind, sn 1 the sums realised by sales in 
the course of the y-ar, together w'th the balance 
remaining in hand tn December .Slst calculated at 
the current rate produce a total value of .^00,.34Or., 
which falls short 14.896r. of the total realised in 1891. 
The c'ove-crop as has been frequently pointed out, 
suffers from the insufBciency of available labour in 
Zanzibar. Domestic slave labour is. under present con- 
diiions a steedily dimini-'^hing resource, and theArab pro- 
prietors mortgaged as they are through both the islands 
to the Indian money-lenders have no available money, 
even had they the h^tit and inclination to hire 
additional I bour. They barely contrive to make 
both ends meet by such crops as they can gather 
in with their domestic slave?, whom they pass on 
reciprocally from farm to farm when the short 
gatbering season arrives. A considerable proportion 
of the crop always rema-'ns nngathered, and it is 
noticeable that large portions of various big estates 
are falling out of cultiva'ion. 
It ia not surprising, therefore, to find that the total 
prodncs of the c'.&ve-crops in '92 has fal'en short of 
that of '91 by some 50,0C0 frasila', while that of 
'90 again •was upwards of 100,000 frasilas better than 
that of '91. The steady decline in th? produce of 
Pemba has in '92 been somewhat compensated by a 
considerable extension in the Zanzibar crop, but 
the cultivation genei-ally teems to te decreasing : the 
crops for the current year do not promise to be very 
heavy, and prices may therefore still further advance. 
— Chemist and Druggist, 
IXDIAX PATENTS. 
No, 161 of 1892.— Alfred Horatio BeU Sharpe, Engi- 
neer, 32, Foss Bank, Lincoln, in the county of 
Lincolnshire, England, for combined steam-boilers 
and hair-heaters for tea-driving and other drying 
purposes, (Filed 5th Jtme 1S93.) 
Xo. 2S of 1893, — Samuel Cleland Davidson, of 
Sirocco Works, Belfast, Ireland, Merchant, for im- 
provements in apparatus for drying tea or other 
vegetable substances or other material. (Filed 7th 
June 1S93.) 
CCCONUT PALM WEETIL IN BRITISH 
HONDUHAS,'= 
I,-— IXTEODUCTION. 
The industry of coconut palm growing, established 
within recent years in British Honduras, has been 
seriously discouraged during the past five or six years 
by the attacks of the insect commonly known as 
the Palm Weevil on the trees, a large proportion of 
which have been killed. In the year IjjSb, the Gov- 
ernment of British Honduras recognised ttie fact that 
the annual loss thus incurred menaced the prosperity 
of the Colony, and therefore appointed a Commission 
to examine into and report on these attacks. The 
Commissioners issued their report early in 1SS9, and 
the Government, acting upon the recommendations 
contained in it, issued a draft ordinance. This or- 
dinance, which was designed to enforce under penalties 
the destruction of attacked trees, and was of a very 
stringent character, was not persevered in and did 
not become law. In the autumn of 1S92, specimen- 
of the mature beetles were received at the Royal 
Gardens, Kew, both from the Government and from 
ilr. C. T. Hunter, of Belize, who is largely inter- 
ested in the industry concerned. The specimens 
belonged to two species of weevils, of which the 
majority were, as was anticipated would be the case, 
examples of the well-known American Palm Weevil 
{Rliyiichoi)horus jyalmamm, Linn.). It was then decided 
to publish an account of the known habits and 
economic treatment of this insect, so as to present 
' With two plates, ia Kew Bulletin. 
