Feb. 1, 1901.] THE TEOPIOAL AGRICULTUBIST. 
545 , 
the man who made his R30 an acre be 
allowed to live because the man who makes 
R70 wishes to make it RlOO ? 
LIVE AND LET LIVE. 
NO. V. 
Jan. 3, 
Dkar.Sir,— If I was quite sure it was Over- 
production that was all the mischief, Kos- 
ling's proposal woiild appeal to me more. At 
any rate I hope his letter will do good. 
ANOTHER V. A. 
PLANTING NOTES 
The Fauna of British India, including 
Ceylon and Burma. — We have lo acknow- 
ledge I'eceipt of a copy of the volume 
"Arachnida," by R. I. Pocock, published 
under the authority of the Secretary of State 
for India in Council, edited by W. T. Blan- 
ford. (London : Taylor and Francis, Red Lion 
Court, Fleet Street ; Calcutta : Thacker, 
Spink & Co. ; Bombay : Thacker & Co., Ltd.) 
— It is a most useful compilation with 
numerous illustrations. 
Bananas as Sick Diet in Typhoid Cases. 
— An American doctor — says the British and 
Colonial Druggist, Nov. 30th— has lately con- 
firmed the belief, accepted in some medical 
quarters, in the value of the banana as a food 
for typhoid patients. It is now positively 
asserted that the banana is both safe and 
beneficial, the stomach practically absorbing 
the fruit owing to its nature. It contains 
only about 5 i)er cent of waste matter, 95 per 
cent possessing nutritive properties. 
Tea Growing in Burma.— A very interesting 
note concerning the tea grown by Kacliins in the 
Myitkyina sub-division of Biunia is supplied by 
the Deputy Commissioner to llic las-t Keport of 
the Department of Land Recorrls and Agrieulture, 
Burma. We learn that tea is grown in three 
hills Mangin, Watu, and Panic, in the Sinlu 
circle. The seeds are dried and stored in Septem- 
ber, and after the jungle has been cleared are 
sown in nurseries in May. Holes are drilled about 
four feet from one another and two or three 
seeds on germinating are dropped into eacli hole. 
Germination is said to take about one month. 
The plantation is carefully weeded and, after a 
lapse of three years, in the month of April the 
tender leaves are plucked. The leaves are either 
boiled or steamed. Steaming is only practised by 
those who have the necessary steaming pots, 
called in Burmese, panng gyaung. After the 
above process, which softens and imparts a 
yellow tint to the leaf, the leaves are taken out 
and spread on a mat for a night ; next morning 
they are put into, bamboo tubes or in baskets 
lined with green leaves. The above tea is known 
as pickled or wet tea, and is sold at K2 per 10 
viss. If the tea leaves are not sufficiently soft- 
ened by boiling or steaming, they are rolled by 
hand on a mat before being put into the basket. 
To make dry tea, the leaves, after being boiled 
or steamed, are pounded tiglit into a green bam- 
boo tube. The thickness of the latter is then 
reduced as nicely as possible, and the tube is 
kept over a slow fire. Dried tea sells at Kl per 
four tubes, each weighing from 20 to 25 ticals. 
The Deputy Commissioner, Myitkyina, estimates 
that 300 to 400 square miles are available for 
tea culti\'atioa in his diatriet,—PiOftttir, Dec. 1. 
Rubber Estates of Para.— Those who 
entertain ideas respecting the collection of 
raw rubber should (say the India-Rtthber 
and Gutta-Perchd Journal, December 2fth,) 
study the report and the statements of the 
chairman of the Rubber Estates of Para, 
Limited, respecting the working of the com- 
pany which was formed in April, 1898. 
During this time the company had only 
carried on business for about eighteen months, 
but had succeeded in sustaining a loss of 
nearly £24,000. Some of this, as the Chair- 
man explained, should really be placed to 
capital account, as the business necessitated 
getting a number of labourers on to the 
estates and establishing factories, workshops, 
etc. The return of rubber for the past twelve 
months of the report amounted to 27 tons, 
against 11 tons 12 Cwt. in 1889, more rubber 
having come into the possession of the com- 
pany, although the number of collectors had 
been reduced from 2.50 or 300 to 170 or 180, 
The collector's had, of course, advances and 
stores to be afterwards paid for, but found 
that when they got into debt, they could 
collect their rubber and sell it elsewhere, so 
that the amount advanced was lost as well 
as the rubbei', but Mr. Jacques hoped that 
this robbery had now been stopped ; so that 
we cannot altogether say that india-rubber 
collecting is a bed of roses. 
The Eucalpytus : Among the Berbers of 
Algeria : By Anthony Wilkins.— Here is a 
striking passage from this book according to the 
Spectator. Aroiuid Constantine the eucalyptus 
had been introduced about seven years back from 
Australia : — 
" Already magnifieent groves of these quaint yet 
graceful trees had grown up as it by masie. Last 
winter came the snow, — heavy and deep. It blocked 
the railway cot once nor twice, and trains had to 
be dug out. It killed every guin tree and every 
cactus for fifty miles round. All are bare and dead, 
and the groves are littered with the sawn limbs 
and logs of you7ig giants, who have thus disappointed 
the hopes of those who have striven — not without 
success in less bleak provinces — to acclimatise them 
in a strange hemisphere. These trees come from 
a land which contains a British population, a good 
part of which is nearly four generations old, and 
a population which has begun to count itself by 
millions. Constantine was too cold for the trees of 
this land. How shall the French say that Algeria 
is too hot for them and for their children ? 
The French make bad colonists ; that is a truth 
which Mr. Wilkin recognises, and he indicates 
readily its causes, — the limitation of progeny, and 
also the nostalgte dxv boulevard, that craving 
for the familiar social life of tlie cafe which is 
in every Frenchman's bones, but not a whit more 
strongly than in the bones of Cicero and every 
Roman of his day. In spite of it, Rome made 
an Empire by utilising other populations ; and 
Frenchmen are, as Mr. Wilkin emphasises, 
excellent administrators. In Algeria they have 
cleaned up an Augean stable ; in West Africa, 
as Miss Mary Kingsley testified, their work com- 
pares very favourably with ours. For the mo- 
ment, and possibly for an abiding future, pro- 
gress in the centres of commercial life is checked 
by the madness of Anti-Semitism, concerning 
which Mr. Wilkin is eloquent ; but take the 
French where their work is merely in ruling a 
half-subdued and alien people, and they are a4' 
