?66 
THE TROPICAL AGlttClTLTURIST. [April 1, l903. 
indifierent about the cultivation of a tea trade. It is 
too large an order. They fiud it better business to 
push groceries and even brushes and hardware. If a 
customer wants tea they are content to sell a packet 
of an advertised proprietary article for a very small 
profit. The result often is that such tradesmen, 
though competent in every other branch of the 
bnsiuesa have little or no knowledge about tea. As 
an instance showing how ill-informed some grocers are 
on the subject, a grocer said, in all seriousness, last 
September, ' I suppose now is the time for autumnal 
teas ' — imagining that the autumn of the tea gardens 
was the same as the autumn of the English harvest 
field." 
According to the Bureau of Statistics of the United 
States Treasury Department, the value of the 
TEA IMPORTED INTO THE UNITED STATES 
was 14,570,285 dols in 1902, 8,74i,190 dols in 1901, and 
11,783,317 dols in 1900. The exports of tea during 
1902 amounted to 924,544 lb, making the net imports 
107,822,920 lb. The Chinese imports were 56 per cent 
of the total, and Japanese 32'1 per cent. The imports 
for December, 1902 were 16,479,579 lb, against 7,565,451 
lb for December, 1901. 
T^ie Daily News, qaol^ing the current issue of "India" 
calls attention to 
THE PLANTERS' LABOUR BILL, 
now being considered by the Madras Legislative Coun- 
cil. " India " declares that this measure " might more 
truly be called the Madras Slavery Regulation 
Bill," and that it will be a public scandal if 
it is allowed to become law : and the Daily 
iVews thinks that while the question of forced 
labour in South Africa is under discussion the 
Madras Bill should be given a share of attention. — 
Hand C Mail, Feb 27. 
« 
PLANTING NOTES. 
Planting in Nyassaland.— For a chatty 
hopeful lefeter from a Ceylon planter see 
another page. He says tobacco is to make 
the fortune of plantation owners, supple- 
mented by tea grown for local sale at 3s a 
lb ! We trust there is a good time before 
all Nyassaland and B U A. proprietors. 
The Pearl Fishery. — In answer to a 
correspondent. We may say that the most 
elaborate and best account of the Pearl 
Fisheries ever published was contained in 
letters by the late A. M. Ferguson, c.M.G., 
to the Ceylon Observer in 1887, summarised 
and repi'oduced in "Ceylon in the Jubilee 
Year." 
Sea Coconuts.- Amongst the many curiosities oast 
np on the sbores of the West Indian islands by the 
sea are numbers of brown, globular fruits, with a 
hard rind or shell, about the size of a hen's egg. 
These are popularly known as ' sea coconuts. In 
reality they are fruits of the Timite palm {Manicaria 
saccifera, Mart.) which grows abundantly in the 
swampy lower districts of Trinidad and along the 
river banks of the South American mainland. The 
tree produces large quantity of seed, which falling 
ipto the water are borne by ocean currents to the 
shores of the West Indies. Dr. Morris in his article 
on ' A Jamaica Drift Fruit ' thus refers to this sea 
waif : — ' In the West Indies the ripe fruits of a palm 
unknown in the greater Antilles are continually 
brougLt up by Gulf Stream from the South and 
washed ashore at Jamaica and other places. They are 
locall*^ called [in Jamaica] sea-apples or sea coconuts. 
They age the fruits ol the ' Bnssu Palm.' The white 
kernel is sometimes freeh enough to be eaten after 
long immersion in salt water. The fruit was gathered 
by Sloane as long ago as 1687, and he remarked that 
it was frequently cast on North-west islands of, 
Scotland by currents in the aea,'— Agricultural News, 
Jaa; 17. 
Vanilla.— Only 4.3,991 pounds of vanilla were 
exported from Mexico in 190!, with a value of 
^57:426, as again.st 64,921 pounds iu 1900 valued 
at £62,565, due to a failure of the crops by 
heavy frosts in the early part of tlie year. The 
value of the exports as here s;iveu makes the 
V due of each pound £1 6s whereas in the pre- 
vious year it was only £1 Os 6d, a difierence which 
coincides with the silver value declared at the cus- 
tom-houses.— and C. Druggist, Feb. 27. 
The Tonacombe Estates Co. of Ceylon. 
—The annual meeting of this Company was 
held today and the report submitted by the 
Directors, as will be seen elsewhere, is a 
model in reispect of the comprehensive and 
interesting information it offers to the share- 
holders. A dividend of 5 per cent was 
declared besides a balance of R5,6o4'06 
standing to the debit of Buildings account 
being written off and a sum of R8,642 carried 
forwar.d. Other announcements which ought 
to please the shareholders were made-that 
the Debenture Debt has been further reduced 
by £.500 during the year and that the Kalu- 
galla estate has been purchased during the 
year for R17,500. A report of the meeting 
will be found elsewhere. 
Merit of Orange Juice.— Professor Kiosto, 
an eniinent Japanese bacteoriologisc, also Prof. 
Koch and others, have shown that the acid of 
lemons, apples, and other fruits, citric acid and 
malic acid are capable of destroying all kinds 
of disease germs. Cholera germs are killed in 
fifteen minutes by lemon juice or apple juice, 
and typhoid fever germs are killed in half an hour 
by these acids, even when considerably diluted. If 
you squeq^e a lemon into a glass of water containing 
cholera germs and let it stand 15 or 20 minutes, 
you may drink the water with impunity, as the 
germs will be dead. These juices will kill other 
disease germs. Instead of telling a man to have 
his stomach washed out, we can now tell him to 
drink orange juice, which will cleanse the stomach 
as thoroughly as a stomach tube, providing it is not 
a case of gastriccatarrh. The fruit diet will cleanse 
the stomack and the alimentary canal, and drive 
off disease germs, which are responsible for a 
large share of our ailments.— J'owma^ o/ ^^W- 
culture of Western Australia for Feb. 
A Rival to Kandy.— Mr. W. R. Town- 
send, a recent visitor to Java, writes a 
description of that country which appears in 
the San Franciso Argonaut Inter alia he 
says :— " At Buifcenzo'rg thirty-three miles 
from Batavia, at an elevation of one 
thousand feet or so, with towering vol- 
canoes to the east and west, the climate is 
much cooler than at Batavia, and the place 
is a popular resort for Batavians. Here the 
governor-general's residence is located in 
what is claimed to be the finest botanical 
garden in the world. It certainly is ahead 
of anything we have seen, greatly excelling 
those at Calcutta and Kandy in Ceylon, 
both of which are famous. There is an 
avenue of kanary- trees, each tall trunk 
covered with a different species of giant 
creeper, some of them orchids, which are 
wonderfully fine. The collections of palms, 
orchids, water lilies, bamboos, and innu- 
merable other trees and plants embrace 
almost every known variety, and are beautiful 
beyond description, " 
