THE TROPICAL AGRICULTUItlST. [Dec. 1, 1898. 
The BiGGKST Trke in Berar.— Tlie picture, 
wliicli v.'e present to our readers this month, 
is a photograph of a big Baobab the (Adcnisonia 
dujitata) at Karwand in the Bnldana District, 
Jlcrar, which v.e recently received from the 
Conservator, Mr. C Bagshawe. The tree, whose 
size can be gauged by the llgure of Mr. Bhu- 
kan, Extra A-sistant Conservator of Forests, who 
is standing in fiont of it, is 42 feet in girth.— 
Indian Forester for September. 
Tun New Dxmbula Co., Ln., has had a very 
prosperous year up to 30th June last; for, 
according to' a telegram to our contemporary, the 
profits were £2L,00(J against £18,047 in the pre- 
vious year ! The dividends to the several classes 
of sha'reholder.s remain the same (ac 16 and 14 
per cenli, about the lieaviest now given by any 
Ceylon Company; ljut the Ke.^erve Fund has 
been raised from £11,001) to £i7,0U0; while £043 
have been written oil on exten.sion account, and 
£1,179 on factory and machinery account. We 
need not say that Diyagama is perhaps, on the 
whole, the most valualile tea plantation in 
Ceylon, with line soil, good climate, favourable lay 
of "land, good jat of tea, ami an ulmiralily-equippcd 
factory pjut all this would not avail so much were 
it not for tlieexperienoed and judicious management 
of Mr. J. E. Dick-Lander, seconded by the care 
and experience ol iVlr. W. Herbert Anderson and 
liis Board in London. The Manager and liis 
Assistants, the Secretary and Directors, are all to 
be sijecially congratulated. 
TiiK Indian Tha Industry.— On page 346 we re- 
produce a letter on this subject commenting on an 
article which a)}jjeared in the Ftnancial Times of 
the 16th ult. In bis article our contemporary said 
the small profits made during the past year by 
Indian tea companies generally compared vyith 
previous years have naturally caused some anxiety 
among those who favour this kind of iuvest-uent, 
and some donbb has been expressed as to the 
actual cause far the diminished returns. Over pro- 
duction has for some little time been held out as 
a danger, and there "is undoubtedly a well-founded 
probability that unless a stop be put to the con- 
tinued extensiou of gardens, production will far 
outstrip consumption. But that this cause was not 
entirely responsible for tlie comparatively poor 
results' of the past year is evident from the state- 
ments made at the recent meeting of the Indian 
Tea Association held at Calcatta. First there was 
the famine then plague and next (he currency ques- 
tion. l'erhai)S the most encouraging statement at 
the meeting was the Chairman's remarks in regard 
to the Indian and Ceylon tea camptign in the 
States. According to Mr. Anderson, the consump- 
tion of the British-grown leaf in North America 
has nearly quadrupled since 1892, and as a large 
quantity of these t^as is used for blending with 
those of Chinaaud Japan, it is hoped that in the 
near future we may see a repetition of what took 
place in this coiuiiry, and that the Britisii-gro« n 
tea will eventually dispace its rivals in the Great 
Republic. That there is a promising field across 
the* Atlantic is obvious to anyone who has visited 
the country. Among the agriculturists especially 
of theNorWi American Continent tea is regularly 
drunk at every meal. Until recently the green teas 
of China and Japan have been the favourite leaf, 
bub during the past year or so experience has shown 
that the Worth American is not indissolubly wed- 
ded to the Chinese product, and further energetic 
efforts to introduce British-grown teas can scarcely 
fail to largely increase the consumption of our 
colonial-grow'a produce. 
• LiBEKiAN Coffee. - Last year more than 10.100 
cwt. of Liberian coffee, \alued at Kx. 47,(>63, 
was imported from the Straits. About 60 per 
cent was re-exported to Arabia and I'ertsia. So 
we learn from the Beport just issued on the 
Trade of India by Mr. J A UoberleoD, OUiciating 
Director-General of Statistics. 
"Kkw BULLHTIN."— Tlie nunibei tor the prefsent 
month contains an exaustive account of the Para 
rubber, Hevea brasiliensis, a native of the damp, 
shady forests of northein Brazil, where the tem- 
perature is very uniform, ranging from 75 degrees 
at night to 87 degrees at nii<lday. The lii^st lialf 
of the year is very wet, the other half relatively 
dry. Tlianks to Kew, the tr^s have been sent 
to Ceylon, where they have borne i<eed, so 
that the number of trees on |jri>'ate estates 
is e.«tiniated at 200,0.0. The rubber collected in 
the Ceylon Botanic Gardei; has been valued at the 
highest market price ruling at the time, so that, ou 
the whole there is a prospect of a good return on the 
capital invested. Keports from Tenasserim and the 
Straits Settlements are also encouraging. In other 
colonies the experiments have not been continued 
sufliciently long to give commercial results. The 
samples from Trinidad are reported as excellent. 
Allegkd Revival of the China Tea Tbade 
— Say.s the Indian I'lnntcrs' Gnzclte of Oct. 8tb: — 
The question which will no doubt exercise thaoiind 
of the Indian planter and his Ceylon ron/Vrre shortly, 
is whether tliere is any likelihood of the revival some 
people predict in the China tea trade. We leirn 
from last home adrioes that those pioneers of tea 
machinery, Mei^srs. W and J Jackson, no doabt stimu- 
lated by stagnation in business from the slump in tea 
here, have resolved to send out their Rpresentaiive, 
Mr. Dalgarno, to see what basiness can be done in 
China. Under these circumstances there may be par- 
tial recovery in this trade, but we do not for a 
moment think that there can ever, even with tb« as- 
sistance of depreciated silver, be any serioas displace- 
ment of Indian tea by China. The conditions under 
which tea is manufactured in the Flowery Land are 
quite different to those practised in India. There 
are no large plantations such ae exist her* ; every 
man tills his own bit of ground, gathers his leaf in, 
prepares ic as best he can, and, when in need of the 
ready wherewith to buy the necessaries of life, carriea 
his basket away and sells it as best he can at some 
of the " Hongs ; " in fact, every Chinese tea-grower 
farms his own Kail Yaird," and in everyway Chinese 
methods of dealing with the leaf are entirely opposite 
to thoae of the Indian planter. The merest tyro in 
tea knows that to allow the manufactured artioleto 
lie about is fatal to the retention of the aroma, or, 
as abroker would call it, " nose ; '' and that the sooner 
lea is set up in a tin-lined box after it becomes a mana- 
factured article, so much better will be the result in the 
way of briskness and other qualities, without which tea 
now will not sell. It is true that were the venture 
in China taken up by a syndicate of Europeans, they 
would no doubt ti'y to adapt the Indian method to the 
Chinese leaf if they could get it in proper condi- 
tion, but in this nt) doubt lies the greatest difficulty 
that would have to be combated. To begin with, leaf 
must be in a certain condition, from the moment 
it is plucked and put in the basket on the field, to 
make good tea ; and that condition is perfect clean- 
liness ; next, to be put lightly into the basket, and 
not pressed down, but left so that air can freely per- 
meate through it. Every planter knows this", and 
tries to act up to it, although there is never perfec- 
tion in it we are quite aware ; aud until chemical 
kuowledge is brought to bear on the subject, we 
shall never know how much damage a leaf plucker 
does when she tramps her leaf down into a solid heated 
mass, and which pluckers are so fond of doing. We 
do not wish it to be understood that an improve- 
ment cannot be made in the mauuiacturo of tho 
China leaf, — far from it, 
