74 S 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[ \t AY I, 1895. 
INDIAN PATENTS. 
Calcutta, 15th March, 1895. 
Applications in respect of the undermentioned 
Inventions have been filed, during the week ending 
the 9th March 1895, under the provisions of Act V. oi 
1888, in the Office of the Secretary appointed under 
the Inventions and Designs Act, 1888 : — 
The Cooling op Tea Leaf During Rolling. — Mr. 
George Murray Collom, Engineer and Tea Planter, 
has applied for patent rights in respect to an im- 
proved method for cooling the tea leaf during the 
process of rolling in the tea-rollers. 
Foil Impbovements in ArrAiiATUs fob Treating 
Tea Leaves— No. 38 of 1895— William Gow, of 13, Rood 
Lane, in the City of London, England, Tea Broker, 
(for improvements in apparatus for treating tea leaves. 
Piled 5th March, 1895.)— Indian Engineer. 
A PLNTING AND PRODUCE, 
Popularising Tea. — The interest taken in all that 
concerns the Indian aud Ceylon tea industry was 
shown by the publicity given to Mr. Stanton's re- 
cent paper on tea delivered before the Society of 
Arts. A reference to this paper, appears in most of 
the leading newspapers in the United Kingdom, and 
we notice by the copies of Indian and Ceylon journals 
to hand by the mail that our contemporaries in the 
tea producing countries have devoted a great deal 
of space to reports or comments on Mr. Stanton's 
paper. Apropos of information about tea and tea 
planting, we notice that Mr. Christison, late of Dar- 
jeeling, whose knowledge of the subject is thoiough 
is to deliver a lecture at East Dulwich next Monday 
on tea planting. Lectures on this subject cannot 
fail to serve the useful purpose of directing public at- 
tention at home to British-grown tea. 
The Tea Supplied to the Queen. — Apropos a state- 
ment freely advertised that Mr. Lipton supplies the 
Queen with tea, a sarcastic correspondent of the 
Grocer suggests that as Mr. Lipton advertises the 
finest tea the world produces at Is 7d per lb., the 
supply to Buckingham Palace was presumably at 
rather a low figure. Another correspondent, who is 
clearly in the secrets of the Royal household, says: 
" The price they pay at Windsor Castle is 3s lOd, 
which is not the 'finest tea the world produces, at 
Is. 7d per lb.' " 
The Coffee Chops of the World. — Recent esti- 
mates have placed the aggregate crops for the present 
year at a much lower level, say 11,213,000 bags, or 
nearly 2,000,000 bags short of the original calculation. 
However, as compared with 1894, the entire yield 
for this season, so far as it is ascertainable, ex- 
hibits a net increase of 2,269,000 bags, composed 
chiefly of Santos and Java, which will not only 
serve as an extra weight of supply, but also 
afford a larger assortment of qualities that are, 
in times of dearth, most readily turned to 
account by the dealers when they are in search 
of coffees of a useful kind at relatively moderate 
prices. The heaviest falling-off in the world's crops, 
says the Grocer, in an article on the subject, is that 
which appears in the yield of Central American coffee, 
represented as giving only 2,050,000 bags, as contras- 
ted with 2,691,000 bags in 1894: and as the produc- 
tion under this head includes the choice growths of 
Costa Rica, Guatemala, &c, the deficiency is likely 
to be severely felt later on, when the arrivals of 
plantation sorts from the British West Indies are 
on the wane. The statistical position of coffee however, 
as regards the better or more serviceable descriptions 
seems to be rather hopeful when we compare the pro- 
bable outturn for next year (1896) with the existing one 
for 1895, as it shows that the crops in the East and 
West Indies, besides those in Central America, pro- 
mise to be bigger than they are at the moment, and it 
is principally in the countries just named that we wish 
to see an extension of the cultivation, as they produce 
the class of coffee best suited to the needs of buyers in 
the United Kingdom, who operate for the home trade 
as well as exporters. All the while it is none the 
less likely that the great Brazil crop, of which we 
bear so much throughout the year, will undergo a 
striking diminution from what it is computed to be 
now, the whole .juantity raised in Rio, Santos, aud 
Bahia not being supposed to reach more thin 
5,850,000 bags, in lieu of 7,100,000 bags in L89A, 
showing a decrease of l,250,0o0 bags for the cowing 
season ; and although thus far in advance of the 
period when estimates of this nature are ventured 
upon, it is not improbable that some modification 
of the foregoing figures will have to be mad«- we 
the final or actual quantities grown will be accu- 
rately returned, there is almost sure to be a posi- 
tive decrease in the average supplies for the futun . 
when the amounts put forth are 11)11 -idv boliovad 
to be about 11,213,000 bags for 1895, and not 
above 10,310,000 bags for 1896. Java crop, it is as- 
sumed, will approach nearer to its normal size than 
it did in either 1894 or 1891, and if it doe- the in- 
crease there may go a long way towards neutralising 
a failure of the yield in other places. A favourable 
feature in the market just now is the improving rate 
of consumption which has been going 011 since th<_- 
opeuing of the year, owing to the stimulating effects 
of the late severe frost causing people to imbibe 
more of the breakfast beverage than has been their 
wont; and in the first two months there were entered 
as duty-paid in the United Kingdom 4.">.(>71 cwt., 
against 43,791 cwt. (official figures) in 1H9I. and 43,021 
cwt. in 1893 The exports, on the other hand, have 
been materially curtailed — H.and V. Muil, llarch 2U. 
VARIOUS PLANTING NOTES. 
Bad News kor Planters. The New York 
Journal of Commerce advocates a tax of 2 cent- 
a pound on coffee and 4 cents a pound on tea for 
the purpose of providing extra revenue for the 
redemption of Treasury currency. But we see uo 
sign of this ad vice being, followed. 
Tea Extension and Coolies in India.— 
Numbers of gardens in Assam — says Tltc 
Indian Planters Gazette — have imported a 
good deal of their labour from the Central Pro- 
vinces this year. Although not quite up to the 
Cliota Nagpore standard, these men aregood enough 
and are specially welcome when, with the large 
extensions being made almost everywhere, the sup- 
ply falls a good deal short of the demand. At any 
rate they are preferable to north-westers any day. 
Tea Companies and .Shareholders. — On 
looking over a local Share List we are struck 
with how few Companies have the " Preference 
Shares" or "Debentures" to which "Outsider" 
made special reference in his letter published 
elsewhere : we fancy he must have been drawing 
his illustration from London Companies? It 
must be remembered that his criticism was 
directed to the ignorance or carelessness of share- 
holders, and that there was nothing to indicate 
in the slightest, mismanagement on the part of 
Directors of any Ceylon Company in the Share 
Lists. If any Shareholder chooses to pay more 
than he ought for a "Preference Share" or 
" Debenture," it must, of course, be solely his own 
lookout. 
Tea. — Says the London Echo, the majority of 
British tea-drinkers are under the impression 
that tea-leaves sold by our grocers in boxes or- 
namented with Chinese characters, and in por- 
celains embellished with Chinese pictures, have 
actually been imported from China. This is a 
great mistake. Real Chinese tea does not form 
one-tentli of the total amount annually consumed 
in the British Isles. The quantity imported from 
China has been steadily diminishing, whilst the 
total amount consumed has more than trebled. 
The market has been shifted from China to India 
and Ceylon, to which we can also add Natal 
and Mauritius. It is just possible, in a few 
years' time, that, instead of being exported from, 
tea will be imported to China. 
