550 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[Fee. 1. 1899. 
to deBtrny tcale in oranges, lemons and apples, by 
expo^iDg the infected fruit to the fumes ot hydro- 
cyanic acid without rendei ing them unfit for market, 
may be of interest to fruit exporters. 
A small fumigating chamber was constructed which 
ronld he closed air-tight, having a capacity of 10 
cubic feet. 
J 11 this chamber a nnnnber of oranges badly in- 
fested with scale were exposed for three hours to 
the vapours of hydrocyanic acid produced from 50 
grammes cyanide of potassium, A oz. sulphuric acid, 
and 1 oz. water. These proportions are the same as 
those recommended for adoption in actual practice, 
but the length of time during which the fruit was 
treater was longer, so that it constituted a pretty 
severe test as to the possible injuriousness of the 
process on the market value of the fruit. 
After three hours the fruit was taken out and al- 
lowed to remain in the open air for half an hour. 
They were then examined for any traces of hydro- 
cyanic acid. There was no trace cf any odour or 
taste of the gas, and on shredding a quantity of the 
fruit finely and subjecting it to dietillation with 
sulphuric acid no trace of hydrocyanic acid could be 
detected in the distillate. A special test was made 
by grating the outer skin of a number of the oranges 
and diatilliijg this separately, as it was thought that 
if the gas had not penetrated the fruit it would bo 
found in the outer skin or in the scale. No trace 
of hydrocyanic acid could, however, be detected, cither 
in ihe pulp or in the shredded skin separately. The 
exposure of half an hour to the air after fumigating 
wouM appear to be quite sufHcieut to enable the 
whole of the gas to escape. 
With regard to the effects of this treatment on 
the scale, I forwarded samples of the fruit before 
and after fumigating to Mr. Froggatt, Government 
Entomologist. He reports on the original oranges — 
''About half the adult red scale was dead and dried 
up, a quarter was dead, and the other quarter alive. 
Upon each orange I found live active larvae under 
the adult scale." 
On the fruit after treatment — "no live scale of 
any kind, both the fully developed females and the 
larvae were quite dead." 
The fruit was, moreover, in good condition and 
quite hard. 
Similar experiments were made of samples of apples 
and lemons infested with scale, with the same result. 
ROYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE. 
A meeting of the Boyal Colonial Institute was 
held yesterday afternoon in the library of the ins- 
titute, when a paper on the sugar industry of Mauritius 
was read by Mr. James Forrester Anderson. Mr. 
Henry j. Jourdain presided and among those pvesen is 
were Sir Frederick Young, Mr. G. R. Le Hunte, 
Governor of New Guinea, Mr. Justice Conde Williams, 
Mr. R. A. Macfie, Mr. A. E.Aspinall, M-. W. E. 
Arbuthnot, Mr. Henry Brandon, Mr. J. A. Ferguson, 
Mr. E. A. Swan, Mr. D. M.Hogg, Major Gunning- 
ham, Mr. E. S. Rawson, Mr. Grieve, Mr. J. P. G, 
Williamson, Mr. W. H. Sherlock, Mr. J. Goodliffe, 
Mr. L. P. Ford, Mr, J. Louis, Mr. W. S, Sebright 
Green, and Mr. J. S. O'Halloran (secretary). The 
lecturer described the staple industry of the island 
of Mauritius from its early days to the present time. 
In speaking of the various species of the cane he 
deal? with comparative richness in sugar of certain 
species, the diseases of the cane, and the havoc made 
by the destrnctive moth, the "Borer" (Xylebonis per- 
forans), the only remedy for which is the cutting away 
of the contaminated shoot and burning it. The dis- 
appearance of former rich species of cane, which 
yielded an average of five tons per acre, was due 
in his opinion to the exhaustion of the soil and to 
the intermittent cultivation of a single species from 
year to year, the feebleness of constitution thus pro- 
duced rendering the cane more liable to disease. 
Several estates had been worked over 90 years without 
remission; hence the soil needed to be renoYated 
by high doses of guano and good manure, and when 
the planter today realized an av«-rage crop of two 
tons per acre he conbidered himself most fortunate; 
this was far from the handeoine nvertge of bygone 
years, when his predecessors were able to get il H«. 
. per cwt. for their sugars, instead of Htf.—i.t., lOs. 
8d.— or evpii less, which was the present day avcTDge 
market price due to the abnormal and unfair com- 
petition of the bounty-fed beet srgHr on the In.iian 
and Europt-'ui marke s. II,- enumeia'ed th»- diffi- 
culties Against which the Mauiiiins pUuter had to 
contend— namely, droughts. diseaeoH of the cane, 
coupled with the attack by the " Bor.>r," uni cvcloiies. 
Droughts, which were now much more f:e<|ueut than 
in the past, were undoubtedly occasioned by the 
stagnation of the watercourses, specially in tiie low 
lands, brought on b.f deforestation, wliich had beeo 
the cause of ruin to many an eetale, end which had 
carried desolation and barrenness into Iocaliti>-8 once 
rich in luxuriant vegetation, and whi-re the n>uch-to-be- 
dreaded malaria was never known before. The only 
radical remedy w*s for the Government to buy np 
all the lands surrounding the watercourses ai\d 
rewood them with good, hardy forest trees; but (he 
local Government was alttgether unable to do any- 
thing in that direction without material help from 
the home Government A cyclone was the most 
terrible foe of the Mauritius planter. The p'anter 
passed through anxious times from the month of 
October to the month of May, the hurricane season ; 
henf-e the barometer was a most valuable piece of 
furniture in the Mauritian home. The Mauritius 
planter was j^uroly lo be corigratulateJ for his sjiirit 
of energy and enterprise in face of Ihe ravngcs of 
the bounty-fed monster on the markets of the world. 
He was doing his very best to produce his sugar at 
the lowest possible cost, which could never be lower 
than 6r8. (8.-i.) per 100 lb. (50 kilos.), as only at that coet 
would he be able to derive a reasonable profit on 
his sales. Many an estate did not realize more than 
7-80rs. (8s. 9d.) as their average last year, and could 
hardly put anything by. The sngor crops, or rather 
the exports of sugar, for the last ten ycr.rs to ]8y6, 
in round number.^ were as follow-" :— lb8t)-87, l()2,:-{76 
tons a.OOO kilos, per ton); 18.S7 88, l-2H)7S tons; 
1888-80, 1.9-2,172 tons; 1^89-90, ]24,564 tons; 1800 91, 
129,143; tons; 1891 92, 124,7.59 tons: 1892 93, 94,097 
tons; 1893-94, 87,408 tons; 1894-9.5, 1.39,449 tons ; 1895- 
90, 117, 43M tons.— (' Garrioch's Mauritius Almanac," 
1893.) 
The largest exportation was to India, which in 
1896 took over 48,0ij0 tons, while Australia, which at 
first took the most of the sugars of the island, re- 
ceived only 13,000 and odd tons; the Cape Colony had 
surpassed her by 3,000 tons; the United States of 
America now stood fourth in the Mauritius sugar 
makets, taking in 1896 about 10,000 tons. 
Mr. Le Hunte, in the discussion which followed 
the lecture, faid he quite agreed with Mr. Anderson 
as to the irieparnble damage done bv Ihe deforesting 
of large tracts of country in Mauritius. 
Mr. Justice Conde Williams said that the problem 
in Mauritius might possibly be solved by the peasant 
proprietor becoming the cnltiva'or of the cane, thus 
leaving the production of sugar more entirely to the 
manufacturer. 
Mr. Loris, .Mr. R. S. Ashtos, Sir F. Young, and 
Mr. M.\CFiE also spoke, and the CuAinMAN brought 
the proceedings to a conclusion bv moving a vote of 
thanks to the lecturer. — Loudon Times. Dec. 14. 
^ . 
A Ceylon Tea Dust Company.— " C.T.' 
makes a suggestion in a letter on another 
page, which we commend to the attention ot 
our readers, though we do not support all that 
be advances. Still the subject is one that will 
have to be taken into consideration, and has 
(as our readers know) been already discussed t 
the lines on which "C.T."'s communication runs 
are interesting. 
