320 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [Nov. ], 1901. 
intereBtiDg way in which these larvte are passed in 
the act of biting and not when the mosquito is 
sucking the blood. Dr. Stephens and Mr Christo- 
phers have examined a series of native villages in 
Sierra Leone and find that 50 to 90 per cent of the 
children were infected with malaria. In all the villa- 
ges the malarial mosquito (Anopheles) was present and 
each hut contained one or more cases of infected 
children and infected mosquito. Thus the native 
in these parts is the prime agent in spreading 
malaria to Europeans. 
MANGO GRAFTS FROM 
FOR FLORIDA. 
BOMBAY 
The American Consul at Bombay has 
lately sent a dozen mango-grafts from nine 
selected varieties grown in Bombay to 
Florida, as a horticultural experiment. They 
were packed in boxes with plate glass lids, 
and he hopes that as tropical fruit intro- 
duced into America generally improves on 
cultivation, some very superior mangoes may 
be the result of his enterprise. 
PRODUCE AND PLANTING. 
THE TEA DUTY. 
We are glad to find that the question of the tea duty 
is not allowed to slumber. The increased duty was 
a. blow to the industry which there have been at- 
tempts to minimise, but no apathy on the subject 
or acceptance of the inevitable can alter the fact 
that an act of iniuatioe has been committed against 
the tea grower. In a letter to the Financial Times, 
" Kar Guzar" deals with this duty question, and he 
protests against this burden on the producer. He 
says: ''Messrs. Finlay & Co., i« their circular ad- 
dressed to the shareholders in their companies, and 
published in your issue of the 10th inst,, rightly 
stated that the sudden increase of 50 per cent to the 
duty previously levied on tea has prejudicially affected 
the industry. They place the amount of their losses 
by it at £60,000, and at the rate of IJd per lb. 
The lower the tea produced is classed the greater is its 
producers' loss. The quality of tea depending upon the 
lay of the land, the altitude at which it is grown and 
the qualities contained in the soil, it is not in the 
producers' power to vary its quality at pleasure ; 
he may pick finer or coarser, he may improve 
the appearance of the tea, but its chemical qualities 
will remain the same to the end of the chapter. We 
are told that the average price of Indian tea before 
the levying of the surcharge was 8d without duty. 
To get an average of 8d a lb. much tea must have 
been sold at 4d per lb, some at Is, but we must not 
think, because one producer received 12d a lb for 
his tea and another receired only 43, that the one 
was intrinsically worth three times the price of the 
other. The difference in price is not regulated by 
its intrinsic properties — the prices the consumers pay 
the merchant are regulated by the relative intrinsic 
values of the teas — but the price the merchant pays 
producers by the amount of duty plus the price he 
can afford to pay to equalise its cup value to the 
consumer. 
THE INEQUALITY OF THE IMPOST 
is pointed out. " The duty falls unequally on teas of 
difierent qualities, and it forces merchants to buy the 
higher-classed teas to the neglect of the others. A rate 
of duty which produces a revenue equal to 75 per cent, 
of the whole value of the industry, a rate of duty vary- 
ing from 60 per cent, to 150 per cent., is out of all pro- 
portion to its value. The price to be paid to the pro- 
ducer will be reduced by every penny that the 
merchant will not be able to recover from the consumer. 
H the naerflfcanl w'shes to sell two teas \q the consumer, 
the one at double the price of the other, it will be 
necessary for him to purchase the lower-classed one at 
a third of the price of ihe other — heuce we may con- 
clude that every 2d added to the duty takes a penny 
per lb off the prices received for all teas below a certain 
value. When the duty stood at 4d low-classed teas 
were handicapped 2d per lb, and tte average, or 8d, 
teas by Id. Now that the duty has been laiisbd' to 6d' 
low-classed teas are handicapped 3d on the pound of 
tea, and average teas IJd, as against the higher-classed 
teas. The duty as it is now levied act.i as a direct tax 
on the majority of us producers. The amount levied 
from me as a war tax 1 estimate at i^.OOO per annum 
It would have been less had the merchants not 
succeeded in passing so much free of increased dutv 
and would have been greater had my teas not been in 
some request for outside markets. It is, I think mueh 
to be regretted that Messrs. Finlay & Co. limited 
their statement to a bare chronicle of results anS 
did not boldly state in what manner and wbv th 
duty has borne, and is still bearing, hardly on o 
industry. The Chancellor of the Exchequer wh"*^ 
introducing hie Budget, stated his reasons for'haviu^ 
selected tea as a fit article for increased taxation ■ i \ 
because it was not an article of manufacture in thi 
country ; (b) it is largely consumed, and (c) at th- 
time of the Crimean war the duty on tea stooii ? 
Is 6d per lb, and that it was promptly raised 3d wifh 
practically no objection from anybody concerned TT 
then went on to state that even with thp ^a'^:^- 
of 2d per lb tea would still cost the consn^"^^ 
2d per lb less than it cost the consumer in isfiQ 
before the duty was reduced from 6d to 4d ner Ih /» 
wound up by saying that he did not think the nrfnn 
lation at large will have any very fair groun^f^r 
complaint at the amount which they will be 11 J 
upon to bear towards the cost of what th . 
majority of them believe to be a necessarv war 
18 very evident from what fell from the Chanrpll > 
lips, as from the tenour of the debate in PnrHotlvLV 
that the Chancellor and also Parliament iiT J^ i 
that the tax should be levied from the^ea con^n ^ 
public, and not from the producer, 
the vast majority who deem the war to have been a 
necessary war, but I deem it wrong to attprrmt t„ 
levy any special portion of its cost^nder lTp^ecil" 
tax from the persons we made war to nrotert Tf 
we are to be taxed, by all means tax us, but levv the 
tax in such a manner that it will not act unequally 
in its mcidence. Had the duty fallen to the lot of th« 
consumer to pay, as it was intended it should 
have done, the reproach that it added to the poor man's 
burden would have been a just one. Why an aTticIe 
produced and manufactured by a large number of his 
Majesty s subjects residing in His Majesty's colonv 
»s also in a Dependency of the Jiritish Crown, should 
be taxed, and articles manufactured within the United 
Kingdom should be exempted, we can leave those who 
talk so glibly of consolidating our Empire to inquire 
into; the principle therein propounded found favour 
with Parliament, and with the rest we have no con- 
cern, and it is most certainly largely consumed." 
THE OBJECTIONS TO THE TAX 
are urged. "At the time of the Crimean War the 
duty certainly stood at Is 6d, and was promptlv raised 
3d per lb, but in 1852 it stood at 2s Id. was reduced 
in 1853 to is lOd, and again in 1854 to Is 6d ner lb 
Thus, when it was raised 3d it still stood at Id per 
lb less than it had previously done. A duty levied 
on trade will fall either on the consumer or the nro- 
ducer, in no instance on the merchant, and in some 
instances, as in the present instance, it may act to 
his direct advantage. In 1854-55 the consumers 
acknowledging the necessity of levying a duty to 
meet war expenditure, could not fairly object to havinc 
the rate of duty raised, more particularly as the dutv 
and surcharge together left them a penny better off 
than they had been in the habit of paving Pro- 
ducers could not object, as the article taxed was of 
foreign origin, and tiiey had no cause to object, a| 
