858 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
;Jl^ne 1, 1899. 
A BOTANIC.Ui EXPKRIMBNT.— The following 
experiment may be of interest to lovers of botany, 
and will piirti.illy explain the two colours (mauve 
and white) found in the cuckoo flower [Cardamire 
pretenxis). Two strong plants were carefully re- 
moved from the ;^ronnd and potted. One was al- 
lowed to Krow in the open and the other placed 
nnder cover, the only light allowed being that 
which pas.'ed through an amber coloured glass. 
In less than three days the bloom under the amber 
glass had assumed a distinct ni.iuve colour, whilst 
that left in the open w.as white, or nearly so.— 
QuarterliJ Therapeutic Review. 
INOIA AND Ckylon Tka.— We lately 
published a letter from Mcsrs. Uo\y, Wil- 
son & Stanton in which figures were given re- 
parding the movement <if Indian aiitl Ceylon tea 
from 1st June 189S to 3lst March 1899, comp.ared 
with the corresponding period of the previous 
year, and a general statement made in reference 
to the deliveries during last month. A similar 
letter had been sent to the Secretary of the 
Planters' Association, who h.is today placed it at 
QUrdispos il. The only details in ad<lition to tiiose 
we have already published are the following; — 
Movements (in lb.) of India and Ceylon tea during 
March 1899 March 1898 
Indian Ceylon Indian Ceylon 
Imports 6,039,152 8.190,084 0,688,567 7,874,642 
Delivarlea 13,149,238 7,310,692 11,717,357 8,095,842 
Stock 52,399,835 18,105.766 59,051,489 18,074,314 
Ceylon Tea Direct from the Gardens, Guaranteed 
Absolutely PoRE.-Mr. Charles Knight, of Kingston, 
near Taunton, who haa been a Planter in Ceylon for 
80 years, wi^hes to start a business in the Tea Trade 
and to give the community the benefit of it by selling 
tea direct from the grower and at a lower fignre than it 
ia now sold, for by the experience he has had, he knows 
the best months when the best teas are marie. Since 
hia retnrn home he has had over several lots and is 
pleased to find they have been appreciated by hia 
customers, and, acting upon their recoinmendations, 
he has pleasure in announcing that he is open to re- 
ceive orders from anyone in the neighbourhood. Any 
order,either large or small, he will be glad to receive, and 
will get it picked in the Factory in Ceylon as customers 
may rtquire, each grade packed separately in cheata 
or amall b xes, for he is confident that the mixing of 
teas should only be done in the teapot. Note the ad- 
dress—Kingston, near Taunton.— [Copy of advertise- 
ment in English paper.] 
Weather Forecasts in America— have be- 
come of great practical v.aluf;. Prince Kropotkin 
tells us in the Ninetee7ith Century that last winter, 
when a cold wave and a blizzaid were expected 
in the West, 6.50 points in twelve ranching States, 
as also all the railway and steamboat stations, 
and thousands of private persons were warned 
from the Chicago weather bureau. Immediately 
most ranchers took their flocks of sheep under 
shelter (200,000 head of sheep and cattle in one 
single small spot), and masses of both sheep and 
cattle were saved from an almost certain destruc- 
tion by an awful blizzard. In April last most 
valual le crops of strawberries were saved in the 
same way. The strawberries were covered with 
straw, or artificial clouds were made. The mete- 
orological service has so much won the conlidence 
of the population that last year it was very 
seriously urged by the Press to Issue forecasts 
of ' increase of crime,' it being known that such 
ati increase really takes place during some sorts 
of hot vcEither, 
" Thi! Indian FowBaTBi.**— Edited by H. C. Hill, 
Conservator of Forests and Director of the Forest 
School, Dehra Duo. Contents No. 1 — April. 1999 :— 
Urandis' Prize Fund ; Photographs of Culch- boilers' 
Camp; Ueniaiks on Forest concessions in Oadh 
and in general ; Taunta E\-tr&cta ; Correapoadenee : 
.More information about liainboos, T F Bourdillon ; 
Forestry in New South Wales, Colonial ; Tu»»ar 
Sdk culture, T F Catania ; Gentation of ths Ele- 
pha'it, C. U. S. : Lonaorn Beetle oo Mulberry 
trees P. 11. C ; Official Papers and Intellitjence : 
Appendix Series and " Stray Leaves from Indian 
Forests"; Forest UeTennes—189H-9'J; Paris Exhibition ; 
Retirement of Mr. J 8 Uaiuble, m.a., r.L «., from the 
Forest Service; Reviews. Shikar, travel, etc ; Ex- 
tractF, Notes and Queries. 
" Thb Queknsl-^nd Aoricultural Jocrkal."— Vo', 
IV'. Part 4. Contents for April 1899 :—Ajn-iculture : 
Market G irdonina— The Vot'etabh' G-irden ; Imported 
Agricultural Produce; Tbo KxpAnsion of Agiicnlture ; 
Knailage ; Agricultural Education in the Uuited 
States; Profit in Wheat Panning; Darying: The 
Orchard : Fruit Culture in (Queensland ; Fruit Fly 
Experiment ; The Export of Fruit ; The Problem of 
Fruit Preservation ; liotaoy : Contribution* to the 
Flori of Queensland; Planto Reputed Poi-iODoas to 
Stock ; Popular Botany : Our liotanic Gardens, 
No. 9; Tropical ludusirius: Queensland Coffee; 
Coffee Notes; Coffee-leaf Disease; Coffee in 1898; 
Manure for Coffee : Manuring of Tropical PUota 
—Corn; Karaie Cultivation; Sugar m the West 
Indies ; Animal Pathology ; Forestry ; General 
Notes. 
Sreds and "The DF.\'Er.0PMEXT of Cuk- 
RENCV IN THE Far East."— Col. Temple has a 
currency paper in the Aisiatic Quarterly Revie^oin 
which we re id : — 
I must begin by stating that all the existing Troy 
weights and currencies in India and the Far East are 
based on one, and sometimes on bith, of two seeds, 
which are known to Europeans as the seeds of the 
Abriis precatorius and the. Id/^iuitit/ifra pnvoniiia. 
I mu-it ask that these two names be borne iu mind, and 
I will call them in my arguments the abruH and the 
adenanthera. The nbruH is a lovely little creeper 
yielding a small bright red seed with a black spot on 
it. The adenauthera ia a great decidujus pofl-bear- 
ing tree, having a bright red seed. Conventionally the 
adenantkera seed ia doable of the abrws seed. Now 
as will be presently seen, our subject literally bristles 
with every kind of difficulty, and here, at the very 
beginning, is the first. The weights represented by tbie 
two seeds have everywhere and an all times been 
mixed up. The terms for the ahrus and ita conven- 
tional representatives have been applied to the 
adnintithera, a,ndi %'ice versd,hoth by native writers 
and European translators and reporters. As a result 
of theaame kind of confusion of mind, whole systems of 
currency have been borrowed from outside by half- 
civilized and ill-inform 5-1 rulers and Governments, and 
brought arbitrarily into existence, starting on the 
wrong foot, as it were. The unlimited muddle thus 
arising may be easily imagined, and so, too, may the 
amount of investigation necessary to unravel the re- 
sultant tangle. Based on the conventional abrus 
seed, there were in ancient, or at any rate in old. i.e., 
in undiluted Hindu, India, two concurrent Trov 
scales, which, for the present purpose, I will call 
the literary and the popular scales. For the present 
purpose also, and for the sake of clearness, I will call 
the abrus seed of convention in the literary acale by 
one of its many ancient names. raA fikd, and in the 
popular scale by one of ita many modern names, rati. 
In the Indian Troy scales, then, the lower denomina- 
tions represented ia each case the obrus seed, but the 
upper denominations differed gi-Satly, i.e., in the lite- 
rj,ry scale there were 320 7'aktikds to the pala, 
and in the popular scale there were 96 ratTs 
to the fold. 
