.A r ARCH 1, JOOl.J 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
609 
The oiiinions expressed by tlie proprietors and 
lilad.igevs of Ihe tea faciories in wliieh the new 
system (the principal item in which is the special 
adaptation of the .new Sirocco ians in existing 
witlierintr lofts) refer, we understand, in the highest 
tei'ir.s to tlie lesnUs obtained. 
Mr. b' G MaGuiie is now in this country, and 
will, we aie infoiniod shortly, visit London in the 
interest of Messis. Davidson & Co., so that their 
numerous clients, rep "eseiii ative of the important 
tea industry, will be enabled to gather further 
]iaiiiculars from h'm as to this new system of 
withering The data and details of numerous trials 
which have been reported on various estate*,' where 
the entire crop of leaf is now being withered on 
this .system, can. we learn, a'so he inspected. — 
Home Colonial Mail Jan. 11. 
CINCHONA AND QL'ININE IN 1900. 
The year 1899 ought to be a memorable cue for 
quinine speculators, as the aiticle has again proved a 
veritable will-o'-the-wisp. The makers have done their 
best; to stem the tide of t-iieculation by refusing to 
make contracts wiih speculators, but they have only 
been partially snccessl'ul. At the first cinchona- 
auction in Amsterdam an average of 8 90c per unit 
was paid, but at the second one the price advanced 
to 10 65o, dropping to lO t'So at the third and rising to 
10 10c at the fo irth. From this period to the eighth 
auction in September there was an uninterrnpted ad- 
vance to 12-250 (the highest point touched). In 
November the unit dropped to 10 90c, and again this 
month to 8c. The gradual advance from lO'lO to 
12"25c was due to a f[>lling-off in bark-shipments 
from Java, but unexpectedly large shipments were 
made during September, October and November. 
There was then a deficiency of 1,100,000 Amsterdam 
pounds to make up before the year closes, of which 
470,000 was wiped olf in the first half of this month" 
Meanwhile the second-hand quinine-market has been 
infiuenoed by every little wind that blew ; but 
makers have been veiy passive, only raising their 
price when absolutely compelled, and at one period an 
advance of half-pence was made when quite two-pence 
had bjen expected. Prices are two-pence cheaper 
today than in January. The notable alterations by 
makers were a reduction of two pence in April and 
one of three pence in December. The highest figure 
of tha year Is 7d, in September, at which time the 
second-hand market stood at Is 6|d spot — also the 
highest. — Chemint and Druggist, Dec. 29, 
CINCHONA AND QUININE. ■ 
Recent events in the cinchona and quinine markets 
have rather upset the calculations of those who 
conceive and act upon short views of the course of 
these articles. With such an artifioial and highly 
— in fact, one .might say, fantastically —sensitive 
market as that created in London by speculative 
dealing, the natural trend of things is often obscured 
aud even retarded for a period. It has bees our gonrl 
fortune to point to the promising positions - f p 
market just before each occasion of late when i 
advances have setin. The.se have not been so s' 
and consistent as natural causes acting alone A.' i i 
have made them. Speculators have paid the penaKy lor 
their weakness, or their rashness, or their raise d;ua- 
tiona. Many of them have shown again their peculiarity 
of cai etully keeping out of the market until it has sus- 
tained several mate ial advances — then rushing in 
as if believing that quinine only wanted a start to 
carry it to goodness knows where. They never 
allowed for set-backs to compensate for the unnat- 
urally rapid advances, and when some of them were 
involved in disaster the others had to pay a double 
nalty, 
But to the men of long views the situation seems 
only temporarily clouded. They will find their ideas 
reflected in a letter from a planter which appears in the 
Troinisal Aqvkulturist. flluch of what this planter 
says reads like p. re-echo of remarks in former notes 
of ours. For instance, he leads cff by stating that 
nobodv will deny that consumption of quinine has 
overtaken production. He continues as follows : — 
"Nor is there any doubt that it will do so to a far, 
larger extent during the next five or six years, for that 
at the least, is the period necessary to bring matters to 
a state of fair balance again. The reason for this is 
evident ; it takes five to six years under the 
most favourable circumstances to "grow cinchona fit 
to bark." 
Five or six years is the time wo allovved for those 
planters to be ready with, new bark who had perceived 
the situation and had begun to extend their plantations 
in view of this. The planter whom we quote is bitter 
towards the quinine manufacturers who according 
to him, "have grown fat and sleek" by their manasuvr- 
ing in the past, though " many cinchona planters 
have been mined by it." He believes the move of 
raising the unit temporarily, in order to stimnlate 
the shipments, is about played out, and he alludes 
to the low shipments from Java during the first nine 
months of 1900 to illustrate this. The Java planters, 
according to this correspondent, have now "probably 
learnt the lesson that a pound of bark at a two- 
penny unit is equal to three pounds at a penny 
unit as regards net results on every four per cent 
of bark." Turning from bark ths planter has next 
some advice to give to quinine manufacturers. He 
says he is " one of chose whose cinchona prospects 
have been ruined by the policy of the manufacturers ;" 
yet he does not blame them for doing the best for 
themselves, but for the way they have done it. Now, 
he thinks their wisest policy is a generous one. This 
is to reduce their margin of profit to a minimum and 
thus by " a good and stable unit encourage the 
planting of as much cinchona as possible in the 
near future, and the cultivation of every cinchona 
tree in existence. ' It is, of course, impossible, he 
says, to tell what stock of quinine and bark 
they hold [all the evidence shows next to none, 
say we]. They have, however, to reckon on a 
steadily increasing demand, and " five to six 
years of decreased production." Any manoeuvre tend- 
ing towards a rapid overthrow of the unit would 
decrease the amount of cinchona which will otherwise 
be planted out in the near future. Even with an 
increase in the plantations, it is pointed out that much 
will not grow into anything worth barking, suitable 
land aud good seed being difficult to find. Manufac- 
turers are advised to investigate for themselves what is 
the state of the cinchona dietricts.—- i?. and C. Drug- 
gist, Jan. 4. 

Ne'W Vegetables. — Were it not that humans 
are creatures of conventional habits, the probabi- 
lities are that our sources of food supply would be 
very extensive, and we should not be as dependent 
on certain known and cultivated species as we are. 
Arguing on this line of thought La Science 
Frangaise puts forward the following sugges- 
tion :—" Oar present garden vegetables are culti- 
vated varieties of wild species ; why do not our 
L rticulturalists seek for other wild plants that 
could be introduced with prolit to our tables ? A 
fortune awaits him who does this successfully. We 
may be shy, at first, of a dish of iris, or a saxifraeo 
salad, but the papers will relate how Bernhardt cr 
Coquelin ate and liked them, and then the iris and 
the saxifrage will become popular, tike the 
potato." The po.ssibilities of the vegetable king- 
dom as a source of food supply are iminens?, and 
the suggestion th'own cut above is well worth 
pondering over.—India7i Gardening and Plant' 
tng, February 7th. 
