'840 THE TROPICAL AGRICULTUBIST. [Nov. 1, 1900. 
The aext graphite deposit of extraordinary size- 
having since its discovery become famous owing to 
the great quantity of material stored up in it— is 
the Ceylon mine, which, counting all the hands at 
work in mining and the manufacture of articles 
prepared from graphite, employs 24,0U0 men, women 
and children. A great deal of the Ceylon graphite 
finds, however, its way to Nuremberg, Germany, 
where the well-known Paber pencils are prepared, 
and 5,500 people find employment in their manu- 
laotnre. Formerly the granular variety of graphite 
found at Borrowdale was thought to be exclusively 
applicable to the manufacture of good pencils, but 
, Mcently it has been found that pure material, when 
ground finely, then mixed with a cement, and the 
mass thus resulting subjected to heavy pressure, pro- 
daces a good grade of merchandise. By the addi- 
tion of fine clay to the ground material, any degree 
of hardness can be imparted to the graphite stem 
enclosed in the wooden part of the pencil. The 
recently-opened graphite deposits of Southern In- 
dia are becoming of increasing importance as pro- 
ducers, although not, as yet, threatening the pre- 
mier position of their more southern neighbour, 
Ceylon. , , - , • .i. 
Artificial graphite having been obtained m tbe 
laboratories of chemists aii a casual by-product, it 
• was exoected that a closer study of the reactions 
inTOlved might lead eventually to its manufacture. 
This expectation, however, has not been realised 
until lately, for the reasons that the methods known 
till 1894 were almost exclusively of an expensive and 
impracticable nature. Of these the method ofheac- 
ine charcoal with molten (iron, and dissolving the 
latter by means of acids from the mass resulting, 
deserves mention, for the reason that it was followed 
persistently with the intention of producing an arti- 
ficial graphite, and that it received an unusual im- 
petus by the introduction of the electric furnace. 
Henri Moissan, a French chemist, has become 
prominent in this regard by his experiments performed 
in a reverberatory electric furnace of his own inven- 
tion, the apparatus having movable electrodes and 
allowing of continuous operation. Moissan, having in- 
vestigated the graphite formed in cast iron under 
various conditions of temperature and pressure, found 
that soft iron, when mixed with an excess of carbon 
from sugar, and heated in a carbon crucible in the 
electric furnace with a current of 2,000 amperes and 
60 volts for ten minutes, dissolves large quantities of 
carbon, and becomes so pasty that the crucible can be 
inverted without the contents running out. The 
. eraphite obtained from this iron ignites in oxygen at 
about 650° ; it contains only 0-28 per cent of hydrogen, 
and is, therefore, raaoh purer than graphite from 
ordinary cast iron. Large works are now established 
at Niagara Palls for the manufacture of artificial 
graphite by the Acheson process, the author of 
which is also the inventor of the artificial abrasive 
carhotxitidinm.— Mechanical World. 
BRITISa FORESTRY. 
Upon the Cliiltern Hills, where beech is ex- 
tensively grown for the furniture-inakers of 
Wycombe, well-managed beech woods are re- 
turning five times, and in many cases six 
times, the annual income that the adjoicing 
agricultural land is yielding, Mr. John Mishe- 
tells us in a new book. In the case of the West 
Wycombe estate the account books show tliat 
for over a hundred years, the annual income 
from the woods has been thirty shillings an acre. 
These are, perhaps the best results that are now 
obtained in any part of England. In most cases 
the results are " very ditlerent, partly owing to 
want of care, but more oftener to want of 
ifpowledge. Forestry is a science that must be 
studied, and an art that must be practised as 
much as medicine or surgery. Dr. Nisbet ■men- 
tions a case of a landowner wlio, even under his 
present system of management, is getting more 
than £1,000 a year out of his woods and who 
pays his forester fifteen shillings a week. This 
nuiaus tiiat a capital of over thirty thousand 
pounds in timber is being administered by a man of 
no education at a wage of £.39 7s 6d a year ; yet the 
scope tor increasing the capital value and the 
annual yield must be enormous: — 
" It can hardly be denied that British land- 
owners as a class, are decidedly apathetic with re- 
gard to forestry. So far as game preservation is an- 
tagonistic to good management of the woodlands, 
that matter has been fully dealt with in the last chap- 
ter. Other three causes, perhaps in some cases equally 
powerful in this direction, are want of funds, want 
of encouragement offered by the State to induce 
landowners to plant waste land, and danger of fires 
along railway lines As most landowners have 
merely a life interest in their estates, and as the 
calls on their purse are many (beginning with the 
heavy demand on succession), they have not, as 
a rule, much money to spare for forming plan- 
tations which are only likely to yield substantial re- 
turns after their individual tenure of the estate is at 
an end." 
" As matters are, our woods and forests now only 
aggregate about three million acres, and are so in- 
adequate for the supply of existing requirements ,in 
timber and other woodland produce, that our im- 
ports under these heads amounted to the enormous 
sum of over twenty-five and a third million pounds 
sterling during 1899. Of this, over five million 
pounds were for rough-hewn and over sixteen million 
pounds for sawn or dressed timber, practically all 
of it coniferous timber from the Baltic, Scandina- 
via, and Canada, which might quite well be grown 
in the British Isles. Making a liberal deduction for 
tile value of labour included in these coniferous im- 
ports aggregating over twenty-one million pounds, 
the undeniable fact is laid bare that Britain annually 
pays, and principally to foreign countries, no less than 
between eighteen and nineteen million pound sterling 
for pines and fir timberyhich could quite well be grown 
in Great Britain and Ireland. There are some sixteen 
million acres, now practically unproductive, available 
for this purpose; and if our existing woods and for- 
ests were managed on business principles, and State en- 
couragement were given for making lai-ge plantations 
under economical management, Britain might in the 
future be self-supporting as to all the coniferous wood 
ree^uired for building purposes If our present 
three million acres of woodlands were trebled in 
extent, and were well managed on business principles, 
in place of being under uneconomic management as 
game coverts and pleasure grounds as is now mostly 
the case with British forests, this would merely be 
able to supply existing requirements, and no more. 
Nay, even if we had twelve million acres under forest, 
and all under the best of management, they would prob- 
ably be just about able to supply the demand for timber 
likely to exist at the time plantations now "formed 
may become mature. Past experience has shown that 
the demands for timber are constantly increasing, de- 
spite the more extensive use of substitutes like iron 
and stone for constructive purposes." 
Cinchona. — The N. V. Vriesseveem cinchona- 
bark department at Amsterdam report the ship- 
ments from Java from August 21 to September 
24, 1900, at 1,249,000, Amst. lb., and the total 
from January 1 to September 24 at 6,450,408 
Amsterdam lb. The exports from Ceylon for the 
week ending September 3 were 270 lb, only,—" 
Chemist and Druggist, Sept, 29, 
