462 SiiE TEOPICAL AGElCULiUKIST. [Jan. 1, iM. 
enabled him so fai" to keep his liead above wafer, 
and despite iiis so called apathy and seeming iu- 
diflference, he has managed to hold himse f up from 
being swamped. The Ceylon planter's rapid pro- 
gress is in truth due to the fosterinj:; care of his 
Government, which is doing more and more to 
encourage him every day ; thus seconded, it is not 
surprising that he is making the marvellous head- 
way that he is. The Indian planter, although 
perhaps' his progress is not so apparent, is ne- 
vertheless, in his own quiet way, forging al'.ead. 
He is fighting the powers that be, and gradually, 
but surely, making his influence fslt. fie is borue 
up with the hope that the day will yet come, when 
in place of an obstructive he will be able to reckon 
upon a sympathetic Government, backing him up, 
and worldng hand in glove with him to still 
further open up the jungles and waste lands of 
Assam, and give employment to many more than 
the 600,000 labourers at present on his rolls. JS'ot 
that there will be farther extensions of tea fields, 
but rather of by-producis of every kind suitable to 
the province. Give the planter the necessary 
agricultural labourer on fair terms, and not at the 
present prohibitive prices, and he will soon convert 
, the forest and jungle into handsome revenues 
paying plantations of rubber, fibre plants of various 
kinds, and other remunerative products ; and the 
native workers on his estates, will likewise do 
their share by turning the adj icent waste lands 
into smiling fields of rice ano rich cereals of all 
descriptions. The Indian tea planter asks the aid 
of his Government to do for him what the Ceylon 
Government is doing for its planting commuuiLy. 
If the Indian Government will forswear its 
obstructive tactics in connection with the recruit- 
ment of labour into the province and encourage 
immigration in every legitimate way ; if it will, 
once and for all, do the planter justice, and give 
him justice, instead of harassing him and tying 
his hands, he will work out his own salvation 
and that of his labourers, and Assam will once 
again become, as it was of old, " the garden of 
India." Wii hout in any way detracting from the 
merits of the Oeylon planters, we must not forget 
that all the knowledge that tliey have acquired, 
they have, in the first instance, learnt from 
their Indian brethren who were the pioneers of 
the tea enterprise, and, all said and done, the 
Indian tea industry still holds the premier place. 
If the gibe— that Indian planters are asleep— is 
tlaqnted in their face, they can at least reply that 
Ihey have been asleep wii.h one eye upen, watch- 
jHg for Mie eliftnes which tliey will grasp 
immediati'-s^ 16 eomsi mthlu tlieis,' refteh. 
f he Oiyloa planters m io be eongmtulated 
OB theif preseaS pfoiperity and ihei? bHghS 
future prosji^otSi They are fully deserving ot 
till the praise wliiell is bestowed on thertij afin 
llieir fe^artipk Is one to be follb\Ved by ^il! 
iitiiilarly feircilmatantied. A review, giving a true 
sli-eoilot of the history of the Indian tfia industry 
\Voilld. ho'-Vever, shoiv thjlt the Indian planter is 
ilot Ofie whit behind His Ceylon confrh-e in the de- 
sire for rapid progression, and such a review would 
prove fqually attractive and profitable reading. 
Indian Planters' Gdnetle, Dee 5. 
[The Editor, I P G, adds ;— "There is one point 
Which 1 he wil er has omitted to dravV attention 
to, and that is that the mwjDrity of lea planters 
in Ceylon are proprietors, and — being their own 
masters — have a free hand to act as they will, 
ladian planters are not so favourably placed in 
this respect." But our Indian conjrere should know 
that in Ceylon, too. Companies own the bulk of the 
tea property. The reason for the greater success 
in Ceylon is that planters form so much larger 
a proportion of the white population than in 
India, and are proportionately more influential, 
thpy are also more compact and more articulate. 
-Ed. T. a.] 
SCIENTIFIC PEAKL CULTUEE. 
Pearl merchants in this country will no doubt 
be interested in the experiments which have 
been conducted near Toulon by Professor Duboist 
of Lyons, with a view to facilitating tlie possible 
cultuie of pearls by scientific means. The Pro- 
fessor, who recently read a paper on the subject, 
before the Academie des Sciences, theorises &?, 
follows : — The pearl is a disease of the shell due 
to the accretion of mother-o'-pearl under 
the action of a parasite, and this disease is com- 
municable to other mollusca of the same 
genus. Acting upon these premises Professor 
Dubois has conveyed a number of pearl oysters 
fiom the shoies of Tunis to Toulon, and under 
his observation they have thriven wonde) fully. 
In their natural state the oysters on an avera^^e 
are said to produce one pearl amongst about 
1,200 shells. The Professor, however, by inocu- 
lating his oysters with a serum obtained from 
the pearl blisters, states that he has been able 
to obtain one pearl in ten shells If this be so, 
the production of pearls should be an easy matter, 
and the pearl of the future quite a drug in the 
market. But apparently the pearl merchants of 
the West are in no way excited. They state 
that such experiments have been made before, 
but tbat up to the present no one has 
been able to produce pearls of a size that 
would make them of any value. One of the 
old theories as to the formation of the pearl 
was that the eem had its origin in a grain 
of sand or other extraneous matter which found 
its way into the shell of the bivalve, and which 
the mollusc was unable to eject. The intruding 
substanc3 was covered "oy the shell fish with a 
layer of " nacre " as the basis of the pearl is 
called, and as time ■went on continued accretions 
of nacre were added and the pearl grew gradu- 
allj in size. Mr, Albert F Calvert, a geritlemaii 
who appears to possess considerable knowledge 
of the Bttbjeec oi peail fishing, adheres to thia 
view in epttiQ of %\m ftlieged diseavaty of Pro- 
imm DuboiSi He gtates morsovei that pearl 
farming ha^ been frequemiy attempted) and 
that the Clllliiese hdVe made great progress in 
the artiflC'iai produceion of pearls, Their method 
of bringing the deairtd result aboilb is to insert, 
sortie foreign substance into the shell of tha 
oyster, and to replace the luollUse in the riVer or 
iCinal in whibh Jihey found it, The nlollil c to 
protect itself covers die intiudiag substance tVith 
nacre, and in due course the (isher comfea alougj 
and collects the resulting pearl. To the Unscienti' 
tie mind this method of cultivation seems to pro* 
mise better results than that advocated by 
Professor Dubois, bub it must be remembered that 
the results of that gentlemen's labours are taken 
seriously by such biologists as have devoted time 
and attention to the study of the life history of 
the pearl-producing mollusc. — Bombay Gazette^ 
Dec 1, 
