THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [Oct. i, 1894. 
within the country itself as oak was onoe used in 
England. Exoept in the heart of the large towns, 
where briok and mortar are compulsory, the private 
houses and public buildings are built of it exclusively, 
ani so is ordinary furniture, such as tables, 
chairs, and the l.ke. This faith in the dura- 
bility of the wood is more than justified. So 
colid and iron is its heart that the weather 
boards torn from huts rudely put together 
by the pioneers of fifty years ago, and lately 
demolished to make room for the improve- 
ments of progress, have been found in a perfect 
state of preservation, and are now exhibited as a 
curiosity. Kauri pillars sunk in the earth, or in 
fresh water, eebm alike impervious to damp or the 
attacks of insect life. These merits having become 
known to the contractors who pave London streets, 
quite reoently small blocks of the flexible, close- 
grained pine of the Antipodes were laid down in 
one of our great thoroughfares, If used before it 
is sufficiently dry, howiver, kauri timber is apt to 
shrink endways. Nor does the value of one of the 
royallest trees in the world end with i'.s death. 
When it has exhausted the properties of the soil 
necessary to its existence, large stretches are left 
rich in the gum which dropped from its mighty arm3 
and trunk. After the lapse of time it solidifies into 
a brown or eherry-colourei substance not unlike 
amber, from which the finest varnifhes are made. 
So important has the trade in this article of 
commeroe become that it far exceeds in value the 
export of kauri timber. At intervals in the forest?, 
too, the bushman comes aoross a tree whose trunk, 
instead of being smooth and dark as an ebony 
oolumn, is rough and knotty. It yields the most 
ornamental of all New Zealand woods, and is 
described as mottled kauri, to distinguish it from 
the ordinary kind. Creamy rather than white in 
colour, and beautifully marked in rioh designs of a 
deep, warm brown, it takes on a very high polish, 
and is so much prized for artistic and decorative 
purposes that the fortunate possessor can clear 
a profit of from 500i. to 600Z. without any 
difficulty. One of th9 colonels of the 73rd 
Regiment, of Maori war fame, bought an es- 
tate near the once-renowned Gate Pah, and dis- 
covered in it a mottled kauri, with the timber 
of whioh he was able to line the whole of his house, 
and to have made a duohesso dressing-tabb, coffee- 
table, eight chairs, a wash-stand, a work. 'able end a 
bedstead. The profit on an ordinary kauri tree, 
whose height is 50ft. and whose girth at base is 20ft,, 
averages 100Z. 
This huge tree, whose trunk is more like a factory 
chimney than anything else, which is unequalled for 
size in the whole realm of nature, upon whioh, when 
laid low, a party of eight can dance a quadrille with 
ease and upon which a small house can be built, is 
sometimes the victim of an enemy before whioh it is 
as powerless as the veriest sapling. This is the 
rata, a parasite with a bright red blossom. In the 
woods, where it reigns supreme, perhaps as in the 
human would for mutual protection, its beautiful 
enemy dare not intrude. It is only when it stands alone 
among the mixed bush that it falls a prey. Against 
the ooy advanoes of the ropes of verdure that swing so 
alluringly from the boughs of a neigbouring tree 
it is as vulnerable as one under the spell of a 
witching woman. But not until they twine them- 
selves in serpent-like windings round the trunk is 
the doom of the monarch of the woods a certainty. 
Month after month and year after year the mur- 
derous embrace grows tighter until the rata proudly 
flaunts its scarlet flowers from the crown. Then 
the end oomes, An equinoctial gale sweeps 
through the forest, and with fieroe delight assails 
the kauri, which has defied it for a thousand years. 
Sapped of its strength, it rocks to and fro and 
shivers in agony. Then it falls to the earth, 
dragging down with it the beautiful parasite which 
has been its ruin. Sometimes the rata grows 
downwards from a fork of a woodland giant, when, 
rooting itself firmly in the ground, it shoots up- 
wards, clasping the trunk in its arms. After the 
final d<.ciy of the support by which it has raised 
itself to the light, it develops into one of the 
most beautiful of New Zealand forest trees. — 
London Standard, Aug. 11. 
LIME CULTIVATION IN THE WEST 
LND1ES. 
There is an interesting note on tbe West Indian 
lime in a recent number of the Kt tr Bulletin. The 
60ur lime-tree (Citrus nicdica. L. var. acida Brandis) 
which yields the lime-juioe and esseotial oil of lime 
familiar in the drag-trad-) was probably introduced 
into the West Indian islands from tbe Kast. Lime- 
juice is obtained by compressing tbe fresb ripe 
traits between heavy rollers. It is exported ia tue 
raw e' ate or concentrated. The concentrated variety 
is obtained by evaporating tbe raw juioe in copper 
or enamelled-irou pans until it is reduord to about 
one-eighth or one-tenth of tbe original bulk. Whtn 
expor.ed it is a dark, viscid fluid ol th i consistence 
of treacle. From tbe riud of tbe fieah fruits there 
is obtained by the ecnellin^ hand-proceas a fine 
essence of lime') exported in copper vessels. The 
process whioh ie a slow one, is performed Ly women 
and girl*. The teste per day is measured iu flutu ouucei. 
By distilling the raw lime-juice a spirit is obtained 
known aa oil of limes. The eseential oil of limes 
extracted by h»nd ia far more valuable ttaa tbe 
o 1 of limes, as the perfume of the latter is injuriously 
affected by tbe beat necessary in distillation. 
Lime-trees were abundant in Domiuioa as long ago 
as 1791, but at that period they appear to have 
teen grown only for their fruit. The lime-jaicsj 
industry appears to have been started in Dominica 
by the late Dr. Imray, but shor:ly after the com- 
mencement of that gentleman's venture tbe Messrs. 
Sturge of Birmingham, quite independently of Dr. 
Imray, aDd withontauv knowledge of bis experiments 
set to work to establirh similar plantations in the 
neighbouring island of Monteerrat. Tbe industry 
oppear3 to hold cat prospects of beicg a remunerative 
one, for, according to a Dominica planter it takes about 
10007. to purchase at out twenty acres of land and 
plant them with lime tree 0 , to build a house for tbe 
manager, to erect a mill with copper boilers to con- 
centrate tbe juioe, to pay for superintendence, a:.d 
cover all expenses for seven years. At the end of 
this time the esta'e would yield forty hogsheads of 
concentrated lime-juice a year, worth 4801. Toe 
j early cost of cultivation and manofaotare would 
amount to 240/., tbe rest being gross profit. — Chemist 
and Druggist. 
CHEMICALS AS INSECTICIDES. 
According to Professor Long, the agricultural 
station of the Pas de Calais has just published some 
particulars with regard to the materials used for the 
destruction of insects, from which it appears that 
insecticides are often used which really have no 
destructive power over insects of various kinds. 
He says some of these products, manifestly efficaci- 
ous, not only destroy insects but the cultivated plants 
upon which they thrive ; others he says, are extremely 
dear ; while again, others, deadly to an insect of one 
order, have no effect upon those of another. Some 
insects, he remarks, have a resisting force which is 
really prodigious in face of the means of destruction 
which are commonly opposed to them. He gives an 
instance in which the larvae of a destructive insect 
were plunged in pare sulphide of carbon, but after 
an immersion of five minutes the little creatures, 
having been again exposed to the air, acquired their 
first vigor. M, Huet has made some experiments a 
