June i, 1895.} THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
795 
So good was the reputation of tea ojiciallij, that 
great efforts were made in her Majesty's navy, about 
thirty years ago, to increase the consumption of it. 
The proferred extra allowance of tea was as com- 
pensation for a reduced allowance of grog, and little 
favour did it find from Jack, however graciously it 
may have been regarded by his masters. There was 
to be no forcing of its adoption, but unlimited per- 
suasion was to be used in order that it might be 
voluntarily accepted. One captain told me that he 
had assembled his tars, and exhorted them, as elo- 
quently as he knew how, to refuse the evil, and to 
choose the good (as it was then the fashion to 
consider it). When he had said his say, knowing 
that Jack's first feeling would be one of indignation 
he said he would not a,sk for an answer then, but 
would receive it three days after, by which time 
they would have been able to think calmly over the 
proposal. At the end of three days the ship's 
company, choosing purposely to misunderstand the 
offer, intimated through a deputation, their gratitude 
for the choice which had been allowed them, and 
their determination to give up their present ration 
of tea, and to get a trifle more grog ! In spite of 
the sailors' ingenuity, and their preference for alcohol, 
tea, backed by the Admiralty, before long carried 
the day. But how is it to be in the navy of the 
near future ? It seems as if, should the disrepute 
into which tea is falling become more and more 
confirmed, the mariners managing matters discreetly, 
might recover some of their lost, but ever-regretted 
grog. Groe itself, (that is to say, rum and n-ntn-,} 
which appears to be what grog originally signified 
once itself an alteration in his ration very distasteful 
to Jack when it was made. He had been accus- 
tomed to consume his rum raw, or at any rate to 
receive his allowance undiluted, and to deal with it 
as he pleased. It seldom pleased him, I fancy, to 
mix it with water; and bitter and contemptuous was i 
his denunciation of the new-fangled and " lubberly " i 
grog. The new mixture was introduced by Admiral 
Vernon, who had been long known in the service 
as "Old Grog," because he wore Grogram breeches. 
So Jack, in the bitterness of his soul, bestowed on 
the emauseeulated drink the name of its author 
and introducer. 
Do not let it be imagined that in giving you the 
above article I at all sympathise with the writer's 
very evident approval of the condemnation of tea 
and regret, for the rapidly vanishing grog. T believe 
our soldiers and sailors are a finer set of men today 
than they were fifty years ago because of the tea, 
coffee and chocolate which they drink instead of the 
" hell-water," as rum is called b}' the very people 
who drink it most. 
Another song in the British Museum is called 
"John's Party unknown to his Wife," and your 
married readers can well imagine the awful conse- 
quences. After imbibing freely in some of the 
above grog— 
"Then Johnson got valiant, ami oath took that he 
Would make Mi s. John to set up ami make Ten," 
hut instead of Te a getting into John, John got into 
"hot water" himself! And hot water reminds me 
that in the very utmost depth of that unheard-of 
North Polar bone-and-marrow-chilling cold that we 
had about a month ago, I not only saw an Italian 
ice-sream vendor standing in the Strand at the 
e id of Book-seller's Row, but I saw dozens of little 
vagabonds produce their halfpennies and eat their 
ices with apparent zest ! I've never been able to get my 
moustache into curl since. And to add to the horror 
of the situation I saw in the Daily News that the 
Police had had orders t" keep their eye upon these ice- 
cream vendors, as they had been seen storing up 
out of the solidified canals blocks of ice into which 
not only flesh, but dead cats and dogs and other 
"abominable meats" had been frozen! Dghl n<> 
wonder influenza breaks out directly the warm weather 
sets in. 
Although the ancient Greeks called a goddess Thea 
and although they had a goddess whose name was 
Theia (who was a daughter o( Earth, as the Tea- 
plant is,) and though they were extremely fond of 
using the particle te, yet it is not proved that Jason 
was acquainted with any other than the Atlantic 
rollers, or that Medea who gave him some " golden 
tips " as to how to obtain the Fleece, ever tasted 
an infusion of the "golden tips" of Ceylon, so that 
the following quotation from the Phosnissae of Euri- 
pides goes far to demonstrate that Scandal did exist 
long before Dharma planted his eyelashes in China, 
or Bruce discovered the grand "Indigenous" in the 
forests of Assam :— 
(Line 205.) " But the race of females is by nature 
given to censure, and if they receive small occasions 
of talk, they introduce more : but it is a kind of 
pleasure to women to speak nothing sound of one 
another." A. M. Fekguson. 
A GOOD FRIEND OF THE COLONIES. 
DR. D. MORRIS, C.M.G. 
The subject of this sketch was horn at Loughor, 
Glamorgan, ami was educated there under the 
late Canon Jones, and afterwards studied at 
Swansea and Cheltenham. He subsequently at- 
tended courses of instruction at the Science 
Schools in South Kensington under Professor 
Huxley and entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 
1869, where he graduated as Senior Moderator 
and University Gold Medallist in the Natural 
Science course. He took his B.A. in 1876, M.A. 
in 1880, and D.Se. in 1894. In 1877 he was 
appointed Assistant Director of the Botanic 
Gardens in Ceylon. He had a brief, but active 
career, in that Colony, during which he 
prepared the first classified List of the 
Plants in the Peradeniya Gardens, and started 
the investigations into the fatal coffee-leaf disease. 
In 1879 he was transferred to the directorship of 
the newly-organised Botanical Department in 
Jamaica. This Department afterwards became 
the chief seat of botanical enterprise in the West 
Indies. The Royal Commissioners in 1884 de- 
clared it to be " most ably managed, and invalu- 
able in developing the resources of the island." 
During his career of seven years in the West 
Indies, Dr. Morris was engaged on several special 
missions. In 1882 he visited Trinidad and Gre- 
nada to investigate the cacao industries, and 
later on he explored the Colony of British Hon- 
duras, and published the earliest scientific account 
of that interesting part of the world. In 1883 
he visited the far-off island of St. Helena " to 
report upon the position and prospects of the 
agricultural resources of the island." In the 
meanwhile; he read a valuable paper before the 
Royal Colonial Institute (afterwards presented to 
Parliament) on " Planting Enterprise in the Wesf 
Indies." He read further papers before the Royal 
Colonial Institute in 18S(i and 1891. His chief 
service to the West Indies, and the one most 
generally appreciated, was starting a botanic 
federation of the smaller islands, to supply 
them witli inexpensive establishments called 
Botanic Stations. This scheme of federation, 
afterwards developed by the powerful aid of 
Kew, has been a most effective means for stimu- 
lating the latent resources of the islands. A 
similar plan lias now been extended to the West 
African settlements. Or. Munis became Chairman 
of the I'xianl of Governor* of the Jamaica In- 
stitute in 18S4. and Chairman (afterwards Exe 
cutive Commissioner) lot- the New Orleans Exhi- 
bition. While at New Orleans, according to the 
