628 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[March 2, 1903. 
ing with marvellous rapidity. In this country 
Ceylon tea finds a constantly enlarging market, 
and there is, in consequence, a steady decline in 
the import of the Chinese product. Several of the 
leading Moscow merchants, I am credihly 
informed, have expressed the intention of shortly 
severing their connections with the Chinese 
planters in favour of the Cingalese growers.— 
London Standard, Jan. 30. 
A NSW METHOD! 
We have before comniented on the extraordinary 
statements which appear from time to time in the 
public Press with regard to rubber. The following 
paragraph is the lichest in humour which we have 
yet seen. It has started its.iounds, and sooner or 
later will nppear in difleient parts of tlie world :— 
" American ingenuity has devised several new 
methods forgetting rubber ready for the ma: ket. 
The milk is drawn from tlie bark by suction, so 
that the pure sap is obtained free fiom the grit, 
bark, and foreign substances which were always 
present in such large quantities in tlie lubber sold 
by natives, After the rubber milk is obtained the 
pure lubber is separated from the other ingredients 
of the sap in much the same way that cream is 
separated from milk, by a patent process. In the 
new method introduced and practised by the Amer- 
icans there is no waste «f sap. By the natives half 
of it is wasted. When the rubber is coagulated 
it is tied up in bales and shipped to New York, 
where it sells at from 75 cents to 1 dollar (gold) a 
lb, and the total expense of extracting it, separating 
and coagulating it, and shipping it to the Eastern 
market is not more than 5 cents a lb. This 
shows enormous profit." — India- Bxibher Trades' 
Journal, Jan. 19, 
MR. H. H. MANN'S TEA INVESTIGATIONS. 
A letter, dated 2ith January, fiom Mr H H 
Mann, the Agricultural Chemist employed by 
the Association, stated' that he proposed to go 
on tour on the 9ch February, in connection 
with his experiments against Mosquito bliaht. 
Mr Mann also asked the Committee to decide 
whetlier, on the coniplelion of this tour, hesliould 
work u)) the soils of the Dooars and Darjeeling 
Districts, or whether he should coiitinue his work 
on manufacture. The point was carefully dis- 
cussed by the Committee, who were of opinion 
that the investigations into manufacture were the 
more urgent, and should take precedence over 
the soils of the two Districts named.— /. T. .4, 
Minutes, Feb. Cth, 
THE PLANTAIN FIBRE BOOM IN 
MALABAR, 
Calicut, 12th Feb.— A correspondent writes to 
the Kerala Sanchari, the leading vernacular 
paper in Calicut, to say that a friend of his 
recently extracted a quantity of plantain fibre 
and forwarded it to Messrs Eddie and Christy, of 
London, who valued it at £15 per ton, and also 
wrote to say that they would give £25 for superior 
quality of fibie, and were prepared to receive 
supplies to any extent. Now that a fair start has 
been made, the opportunity ought to be seized by 
\vealtby Malayalis— and there are several whose 
ancestral wealth is rusting in disuse— to launch 
what promises to be a remunerative industry. 
The plantain tree is about the most familiar 
ieatu.'e in the sub-arborescent vegetation of the 
Malabar Coast, and the raw material for the fibre 
is to be had in abundance. — Madras Mail, Feb, 14. 
POPULAR SCIENTIFIC LECTURES. 
"THE PECULIARITIES IN ANIMAL LIFE IN CEYLON." . 
(Special.) 
The fifth lecture of the series of Popular Scien- 
tific Lectures was delivered in the Ceylon Medical 
College on Saturday, 1-tth Feb uary, by Dr 
Arthur AVilley, the Director of the Colombo 
Museum. The lecturer first dwelt on that re- 
markable peculiarity in the fauna of Ceylon 
first noticed, we believe, by Sir Emerson Tennent 
^iz :— that Ceylon fauna consisted partly of Indian 
and partly of Malayan and Australian types and — 
what was more remarkable— were wanting in 
types which one' would certainly expect to meet; 
as for instance the hamadryad or king-cobra, 
the tiger, and the ante!ope. Afer a brief reference 
to the Singha or lion in Sinhalese Mythology as 
being significant of the alien source of the Sinha- 
lese race, the lecturer, with the aid of lantern 
sli^les, spoke first of the larger animals such as the 
leopard, and the various deer found in Ceylon, 
one species of which, whose headquarters are in 
Northern India, tradition ascribes as having been 
introduced by the Dutch, though no record has 
been found referring to such introduction. He 
ti)en dwelt on the different lizaids including 
the chameleon, the rare ceratophora or horned 
lizards found upcountry, and the false snakes or 
underground lizards. The next branch to be taken 
up was that of the fishes when the audience 
were entertained by descriptions of the burying 
fish like the " Lula" which lies dormant for a long 
time in dried up tanks waiting for the next rainy 
season ; of t!ie travelling and climbing fish, one 
species of which may be found in Mount Lavinia 
climbing on the top of rocks while another 
may be met with walking along the wayside or 
even climbing trees ; of the king-crab "the last of 
the Mohicans," a crustacean of ancient lineage 
one who can trace an unbroken descent from 
ancestors living in times long before the advent 
of that parvenu, Man ; and of the erect swim- 
ming fish or fish with its dorsal aspect like the back 
of a razor and its ventral aspect as sharp as the 
front of a razor— a blunt razor. Dr Willey then 
turned his attention to those two low marine 
organisms on the life history and develop- 
ment of which the lecturer may be described 
as an authority ; viz. the Ampbioxus and 
the Balanoglossus. He impressed on his audience 
the importance of these two organisms lying as 
they do on the border land between the verte- 
brates and the lumbricates or earth worms— the 
highest form of invertebrates ; for it is held by 
most scientists that the evolution of the verte- 
brates proceeds from the invertebrates through 
the Ampbioxus and Balanoglossus. Dr. Willey 
here showed some splendid slides of the develop- 
ment of the Ampbioxus and Balanoglossus, photo- 
graphs taken evidently from his own excellent 
set of specimens The next subject dwelt on was 
the Molluscs where the audience were shown some 
beautiful slides of the Pearly and the Paper 
Nautilus, the shell of the former of which is to 
be found occasionally in Trincomalee, thougli 
