THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [April i, 1895. 
too much for their good?, their prices evidently 
being based on what their fruit would fetch in 
Melbourne — a protectionist market. The Murray 
Irrigation Clonies have the chance of doing as 
successfully as California; their natural opportuni- 
tes are equal to anything I saw in any part of Cali- 
fornia, and success only depends upon the energy 
and enterprise of the settlers. Much may be doce 
by cooperation amongst the settlers to be able to 
place a uniformly graded article on the market." 
Speaking of Australian fruit sent to England, Mr. 
Smith remarked that a good quantity is improperly 
packed and improperly cared for on the voyage, and 
that it is too frequently flavourless and discoloured 
by the time it reaches Covent Garden He does 
not think there is any profit in growing raisins and 
currants for the English market. Spain and Greece 
with cheap labour have been realizing prices in 
London below the cost of production. Only the very 
best prunes are worth growing for export, because 
inferior grades cheaper than we can produce are 
sent to England from Bulgaria and Servia. Unless 
first-class prunes can be placed in London at from 
6d to 8d. a lb. they had better be left alone, accord- 
ing to Mr. Smith, who added that between 60,000 
and 80,000 acrea have been planted in California, 
Oregon, and Idaho, U.S.A., enough, it is estimated 
to leave an enormous surplus of prunes for export. 
After a careful study of the Indian markets Mr. 
Smith found the demand for imported fruit was much 
smaller than he anticipated. The white population 
of British India, totalling about 100,000, of which 
70,000 are military, are almost the only consumers. 
" The religious prejudices of the natives," he added, 
" will not allow the bulk of them to eat imported 
fruits, even though they can afford to do so. They 
have a great variety of their own fruit so that the 
Indian market is hardly worth consideration to Aus- 
tralian exporters. I found eight or ten colonial firms 
had agencies throughout India for the sale of their 
wines, and that nowhere was the quantity sold very 
large. Those who can afford to buy good wines can 
afford the French.' — Australian Register. 
THE AGRICULTURE OF TRINIDAD. 
SUGGESTIONS AND OPINIONS OF A SCIENTIST. 
Baron Eggers who set out yesterday for Ecuador 
has b en good enough to communicate to us his 
views on the agriculture of Trinidad. We feel sure 
the subjoined Note will be read with deep interest 
by a very large number of our readers: — 
Having had the pleasure of again visiting your 
lovely island I would ask your permission, before 
leaving, to make, through your columns a few remarks 
on the present state of agriculture, which may per- 
haps be of some use and which at all events will 
manifest the lively interest I, like most visitors to 
Trinidad, have become inspired with regarding the 
progress of this most interesting colony. 
The splendid Botanical Garden, which forms an 
object of admiration to every lover of Nature, being 
justly intimately connected with agriculture here, 1 
may perhaps be allowed to make the following remarks 
on the staple iudustry of the island, especially as by 
the well-known courtesy of the present director, every 
facility for information is readily given to inquiring 
visitors in every way. In a colony like Trinidad a 
Botanic Garden" ought no doubt to be as much or even 
more devoted to the furtherance of practical agricul- 
ture on a scientific and rational base, than to merely 
pure botany and ornamental gardening, the expenses 
for these latter branches alone being hardly war- 
ranted in a place of the size of this island. It there- 
fore has given me great pleasure to see the steady 
progress made from year to year in this direction 
by the present able director, who, by introducting 
new and useful plants, by studying the diseases and 
enemies of various plants under cultivation and by 
disseminating useful knowledge of a varied character 
through the excellent Bulletins of the Garden, ap- 
pears to me to be doing a most useful and meri- 
torious work which mu9t be of great interest not 
only to this community but also to other countries 
similarly situated. 
However much progress has been made in this 
respect of late, yet there appears to be still a large 
field for improvement, t-bpecially with regard to tbe 
application of different manures, a point that seems 
not as yet to have been much attended to in this 
island. The preliminary trials in this respect might 
no doubt be conveniently carried out at the Bo'anio 
Garden, especially if some of the adjoining lands 
could be added to the present space occupied by that 
institution. In order to carry out these most im- 
portant experiments on the various cultivated plants 
it would of course be necessary to call in tbe aid 
of the chemical analyst and to establish an harmo- 
nious co-operation between the expert in vegetable 
biology and the man of reactives, as only thus po- 
sitive results can be arrived at as to the modes of 
obtaining the greatest yield at the lowest coat, by 
studying the nature of the different soils of the island 
and tbe effects of the various manures on the plants 
cultivated upon them. 
Modern agriculture is so essentially dependent on 
the combined ttudy of biology and chemistry, that 
it seems difficult to comprehend any real progrers 
being possibl without opplying the two sciences 
named to the work in tbe field. 
The cultivation of the sugar cane, the cocoa, the 
coffee and similar products must evidently be baaed 
upon the same fundamental principles as that of 
wheat, roots and clover, and if these latter products, 
even with the advantages of rotation of crops, which 
is inapplicable to the former, have had to call on 
science to show them the way for a more pro- 
fitable treatment in order to " make two blades of 
grass grow where formerly there only grew one," 
we may safely conclude this same assistance will be 
required by permanent tropical products, which, year 
after year, deprive the soil of certain mineral cub- 
stances that must necessarily run short after some 
time, however rich the soil may have bee i from the 
beginning, and however rapid decomposition of organic 
matter mav go on in hot climates. 
As an instance of mistakes in this respect, I may 
mention the practice I have observed here in several 
places of planting coffee in the rows between the 
cocoa trees. When we remember what an extraordi- 
nary amount of potash ia required by the coffee tree, 
it is evident that, even if the soil were rich enough 
in phosphoric acid and lime for the requirements of 
both cacao and coffee, yet the potash would hardly 
be sufficient very long for both and thereby. Accor- 
ding to the important law of the minimum of one 
necessary substance governing the yield of a crop, 
regardless of any abundance or even excess of other 
equally necessary material*, the result as a whole 
becomes a miserable failure. 
In places where these and other simi'ar facts are 
ful y understood, such things could of course never 
happen, and it would seem a most desirable thing 
that necessary useful information in this respect 
after previous analysis of the soils of the various 
districts or even estates of the island, should bscome 
the common property of all agriculturists here. As 
a general rule it may be said that cacao requiiei 
principally phosphate of lime, coffee, on the other 
hand, besides some of this substance chiefly potash 
as mentioned already above, the necessary quantity, 
however, being of course very variable according to 
the composition of the various soils, which variation 
it would be the business of the chemist to ascertain. 
As regards the sugar-cane, a branch of agri -u ture 
that at present suffers from various causes principally 
diseases of the plant and low prices of the sugar, 
I believe, that the disease might be to a great ex- 
tent counteracted by keeping up the vital powers 
of the plant through suitable manuring and by adop- 
ting the system common in South America, where 
no disease, is known as yet, viz. : burning the whole 
of the trash and canes eft on the n Id after the 
crop is taken off, by which radical treatment not 
only all di- eased leaves and canes are destroyed 
and further contagion prevented, but also many noxious 
animals annihilated. 
