April j, 1895.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
693 
should be appropriated to the extinction of the debt, 
which amounted to 600,000 francs. There is already, 
says the United States Consul, every hope of suc- 
cess. Abandoning all idea of establishing plantations 
in Europe, the company imports the raw material 
direct for China, where it has already passed through 
the first and somewhat incomplete operation of de- 
cortication. On its arrival at the factory, it is passed 
a second time through a decorticating machine, of 
of which M. Favier, the manager of the company, 
is the inventor, and finally relieved of all the gluti- 
nous matter by a chemical process, of which M. 
Favier keeps the secret, but which is supposed to 
consist of a weak alkaline' solution, in which the 
fibres are boiled. It is then spun into thread, when 
it is ready for manufacturing the articles already 
mentioned. The factory employs at present about 200 
hands, men and women, and the business done re- 
represents a value of about 1,000,000 francs (£40,000) 
annually. Manufactured ramie is a little dearer tha n 
cotton or linen goods, but its durability is said to 
be threefold that of the latter. It is claimed that 
it will always preserve the original gloss. The fac- 
tory does not, it is said, intend to continue the manu- 
facture of tissues, but will confine its business to 
spinning, so as to furnish the large weaving indus- 
tries with thread. The actual price of the thread 
ranges from 4 to 12 francs per kilogramme (from Is 
6d to 4s 6d per pound), but the company asserts that 
as soon as the cultivation of ramie becomes developed 
in other countries, (South America especially) these 
prices will be much lowered. Besides this branch 
of the industry, the company manufactures ramie- 
pulp for the making of paper of all kinds, but es- 
pecially for that intended for bills of the Bank of 
France. This bank has made a contract with the 
company, by which the latter is obliged to keep in 
stock for the bank 20,000 kilogrammes of pulp in one 
of the bank's large store-rooms at Marseilles, and to 
have on hand 20,00o kilogrammes more, while the 
bank itself has always a similar amount in its paper 
manufactory near Paris, making in all 60,000 kilo- 
grammes at all times available. The price of the 
pulp is six francs per kilogramme (about 2s 3d per 
pound), and it is said that the notes made with this 
material are not only stronger than others, but they 
defy imitation. The company is at present in ne- 
gotiation with the Russian Government on the subject 
of the supply of pulp for use in making paper for 
the Bank of Russia. At the present day, although 
both climate and soil are adapted to its production, 
ramie is practically uncultivated in France. Some 
years ago, when the vineyards were ravaged by the 
phylloxera, and before the American vine was intro- 
duced, cultivators, in some of the districts of the 
south of France, replaced the vine stocks by those 
of ramie, in order .to utilise the ground. As soon, 
however, as it was discovered that the American vine 
was invulnerable to the attacks of the phylloxera, 
the experiment of cultivating ramie was abandoned, 
as the cultivation of the vine was so much more 
profitable. — Journal of the Society of Arts. 

PLANTING NOTES. 
Central Province, 22nd March. 
You rather try to sit upon the contributor of 
Planting Notes, by characterising as absurd, his 
ideas that Directors of Tea Companies should value 
coconut properties in which they are interested, on 
a seven years' purchase. The writer of planting notes 
has been always of opinion that a lb. of feathers 
weighs as much as a lb. of lead. A valuator of tea 
property puts his figures of yield and prices on as 
safe a basis as the valuator of Coconut property. 
I maintain that Directors of Tea Companies have 
no right to water their shares by investing their 
Shareholders' money in property that does not yield 
them equally good " dividends as tea. Directors of 
Coconut Companies who only expect 5 per cent are 
quite at liberty to take an 18 years' basis for valuing. 
I have been reading Lady Dufferin's " Our Viceregal 
tour " and a most interesting book it is. Sbe has 
described the art of manufacturing tea very concisely, 
and very correctly. I think her description in pages 
156 and 157 of Vol. No. 2 worthy of a place in your 
Trdpiciil Agriculturist. 
She hits off the reception by her husband of a 
deputation of Mysore coffee planters as follows ; — 
" The coffee planters had no grievances to complain 
of and even liked the falling rupee. Is it not nice 
of them ? " If Lady Dufferin paid a visit to Ceylon 
now, she would find our planters in a very different 
frame of mind. The Ceylon Government Railway 
and its management would be grievance No. 1. Offi- 
cial obstruction to Railway Extension No. 2. Un- 
popular taxes such as those on light No. 3, and theft 
of praedial products No. 4. 
Weather is most peculiar. In some parts of 
Maskeliya and Dikoya you find planters complaining 
of too much rain ; other planters in different parts 
of these districts comphvn that they have not 
enough rain. As for Kandy, Gampola, Pussellawa, 
Matale, Kurunegala they seem to nave no rain at 
all, an everything is burned up. The Spring Crop 
of Cocoa will be short, very. 
The Price of Tea is down again. Are China tea 
buyers going out to China now ? It will be some 
time before terms of peace are arranged by China 
and Japan, and to pay their war expenses and the 
terrible bill Japan will have against them, China 
will have to put on terrible squeezes on tea, silk, d'c. 
Ceylon Tea Commissioner. — We should be soon 
having accounts of this gentleman's work in the 
United States. If he sells our tea as well as he sells 
his own estates he will do well for us. 
Local Tea Market is dull now. I notice large lots 
of tea bought in at last tea sales. 
Sale of Tea Sweepings Collected by Dock Com- 
panies. — Your London correspondent, Mr. Christy, 
deserves to receive a special vote of thanks from the 
Planter's Association for exposing the disgraceful 
way the plunder of our teas oy these Companies is 
disposed of. I presume our Chairman, at next meet- 
ing of Committee, will take this matter in hand. 
Shippers are always complaining of these terrible 
losses on weight, and no wonder when we see the 
large quantities of our tea which are disposed of 
by our Dock friends, I mean enemies. They add insult 
to injury by selling these sweepings, as if they were 
actually received from gardens in that condition. 
A FIRST PEEP INTO SUMATRA. 
(By an old Ceylon Coffee Planter.) 
LXBERIAN COFFEE. 
First impressions should never be published. Re 
cord them by all means for your own benefit ; for 
they will be well worth referring to when time and 
experience have modified those " first impressions." 
But the reader of the first edition is apt to regard 
It as a sort of dogma ; and hang his hat on to it 
forgetful or unaware that the white ants of experience 
may eat away that hat-peg. 
Hence I hope the following lines will convey no 
" impressions, " but only serve to describe what the 
writer has seen with his own eyes. 
First I saw the approach to Belawan, the sea- 
port, or rather the landing stage, of Medan, Deli, a 
low flat marshy coast line, mangrove swamps to the 
water's edge : then crawling up a muddy creek, engine 
room bells going all the way. At last we are 
moored alongside the Wharf, and at once are 
boarded by Malay porters who carry our trunks to 
the railway station. It is only across the staging : 
the steamer being on one side of the platform ana the 
train on the other. The inevitable custom house officer 
of course seizes the luggage; but there is no trouble* 
* Fire-arms. — The Dutch regulations are very strict 
as regards these. All arms and ammunition must 
be handed over at once to the Custom's authorities, 
who will hold them until you receive an official 
permit to carry them. In Java I got my permit in 
5 days : but I have known a case where an English- 
man had to wait nearly two months before he got 
his gun out of bond. No import duty iH charged— 
or at least, was not in my case. 
