m. tHE TROPICAL 
NEW TEA COMPANIES. 
. The following have been registererl inEngland;— 
Klind Tea Agency, Ltd., (74,781),— Kegislered 
Sept. 4th with capital £100, in £1 shares, to 
acquire the business carried on by F A Wooilatt 
as The Blind Tea Agency, and to carry on the 
business of planters and growers, importers and 
blenders of and dealers in tea, coffee, cocoa and 
other Eastern and Colonial products, etc._ No 
initial public issue. The No. of directors is not 
to be .less than 3 nor more than 6 ; the first are 
F A Wooilatt, E E Jex and R S AVells. Re- 
gistered office, 5, Fen Court, Fenchurch Si", E. C, 
Empress Tea Stores, Ltd.. (74 803).— Re- 
gistered Sept. 6th with capital £15,000, in £1, 
shares (50 def.), to carry the business of wholesale 
and retail merchants, dealer?, importers and manu- 
facturers ofxea, coffee and all kinds of foods, drinks, 
provisions, drugs, chemical", confectionery, per- 
fumery, soap, furniture, household goods, etc. 
The subscribers are; 
Shares. 
G W Winter, 11 Plympton Avenue, Brondea- 
bury, N W, clerk ... .. ..1 
W L Eowe, 55. Warham Eoad, Hornsey, 
N clerk .. .. .. ... 1 
T C S St. John, 119, Canfie'ld Gardens, N W gent 1 
W H Lewis, 711, Underbill Eoad, Dalwicb, 
S E, clerk ... ... .. ... 1 
0 J Chapman, 57, Bramford Eoad, East Hill, 
Wandsworth, S W clerk .. ..1 
C Jones, 24, Eoupell St, clerk ... . . 1 
E H Hoare, 1, Seymour St. W, gent .. 1 
No initial public issue. The number of directors 
la not to be less than 3 nor more than 5; the 
first are to be appointed at the first general meet- 
ing ; qualification £25. Registered by Neve & Co., 
21 , Lime St, E. C— Investors' Guardian, Sept. 13. 
A MOSQUITO EXPELLEE. 
Mr. William Stiell, representing Messrs. Ley- 
shon and Carroll, of Durban,] has been visiting 
Delagoa Bay, with an ingenious apparatus for 
driving mosquitoes and microbes of organic matter 
out of a room. It is in the form of a tin 
cylinder, with large wick inside. This wick is 
saturated with ozone, extracted from pine-wood, 
togetlier with eucalyptus oil and other ingredients, 
and the fumes arising therefrom drive the obnox- 
ious insects and microbes from any moderately- 
sized room. — 0 Fufuro. 
■ ■ ^ 
;tiNEAPPLE AS AN AID TO DIGESTION. 
■ Under this head the Agricultural News, which ia 
«' Fortnight'y Eeview of the Imperial Department of 
Agricnlture for the West Indies, has a note which has 
an important bearing on the trade in tinned Pine- 
apples. The flavour of these fruits and their price, as 
compared with that of the fresh grown fruit have 
gained for them a very wide reputation, and tinned 
Pineapples are not despised even on the ta,bles of the 
upper classes, ao that Pineapples in this form have 
become a very large article of import, both from the 
West Indies and from the Straits Settlements. The 
fact of their containing a digestive ferment, to which 
the Agricultural News draws attention,, is another and 
a strong recommendation to their use as a desert 
fruit. For a long time the Papaw (Carica papaya) 
has been known to contain a valuable ferment known 
ae papain, used as an aid to digestion, and the 
Agricultural News now refers to the fact bromelin, the 
ferment of the Pineapple ia almost identical in its 
{iiCti9Q with papain, Quoting frpm Va^ Lmcet, ii U 
AGRICULTURIST. [Nov* 1, 1902. 
stated that "the partaking of a slice of Pineapple after 
a meal is quite in accordance with physiological indi- 
cations ', Bromelin exerts a powerful action on 
proteids ' digesting 1,0C0 times its own weight within 
a few hours. Fibrin disappears entirely, the white of 
eggs is digested slowly, whilst albumen of meatia 
transformed first to a pulpy gelatinous mass to be 
completely dissolved later. Cooking destroys the 
activity of the ferment, but the Lancet is of opinion 
that unless the Pineapple ia preserved by heat, there 
is no reason why the tinned fruit should not retain ita 
dif<estive power. On this the Agricultural Neics says — 
" Unfortunately tor this hope. Pi eapples are sterilized 
by steam-heat during the process of canning, the fer- 
ment being almost certainly destroyed. Unlike pepsin 
the digestive principle of the Pineapple will operate 
in all acid, neutral, or even alkaloid meSium, accord- 
ing to the kind of proteid to which it ia presented. It 
may therefore be aasumed that the Pineapple enzyme 
would not only aid the work of digestion in the stomach 
but would continue that action in the intestinal tract. 
Pineapple, it may be added, contains much indiges- 
tible matter of the nature of woody fibre, bat it ia 
quite possible that the decidedly digestive propertiea 
of the juice compensates for this fact." With such 
important properties in the fresh fruit, it seems that 
there is an opening for some one to try his hand in 
preparing Pineapples for exportation without the aid 
of heat. — John E. Jackson, Claremont, Lympstone, 
Devon. 
RUBBEE EXPORT FROM PARA. 
A report, dated 7th July last, by the United 
States Consul at Para slates that, according to 
the final returns, the shipments of rubber from 
the Amazon Valley this season amounted to 
29,997 tons, or 2,317 tons more than in 1900 1901. 
In the season just begun, it is believed that 
an exceptionally good crop will be harvested. 
The rubber fields of the lower river, and especially 
on the islands, are slowly but surely failing, both 
in quantity and quality ; but the decrease is more 
than made up by the development of new fields 
and the expansion of the old fields on the 
Upper Amazon. While all the more important 
of the Amazon are supplying their full quota 
of rubber, and even making a promising in- 
crease, interest will be centred in the now famous 
Acre territory and in South-eastern Ecuador. 
In the regions reached by the Purus (of which the 
Acre is a tributary), Jiirua, Beni, Madre de Dies, 
.Javari, Ucayali, Japura, and other great afiiuents 
of the Upper Amazon, which penetrate Peru, 
Bolivia and Ecuador, there are illimitable rubber 
forests as yet unexplored, which will now be 
gradually developed. Many seringueirous, or rubber 
gatherers, are making their way to these regions, 
and it is reported that several syndicaies are 
about to begin operations in new fields in Bolivia 
and Peru, Bolivia continues to offer inducements 
for the colonisation and development of her 
vast area of rich rubber and mining territory. 
The Consul adds that he is informed that 
the Government of the State of Amazonas has 
granted the e.Kclusive privilege of receiving, 
cutting and packing all the rubber produced 
in that State to one wharf company. The crea- 
tion of this monopoly will injure the rubber trade 
of that region, but Peru Bolivia and Ecuador 
will be the gainers, as rubber growers and gatherers 
in Para are seeking to escape the new restric- 
tions, which entail considerable expense and trou- 
ble upon expoiters, — Boated of Trade Journal ^ 
September 4. 
