April 1 19G2 ] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
B53 
The population is relatively large and is distinguished 
by remarkable aptitude for work and for trade. 
In the forests oil palms and panza are abundant. 
There is also a kind of palm, the Baplda, very 
^idel spread in the basin of the Congo, and which 
will be dealt with advantageously when the railway is 
made. Its leaves furnish fibrous thongs, used there 
in weaving little mats (mandiba), and they are used 
by horticulturists in Europe for ligatures, At pre- 
sent Madagascar furnishes the fibres known as 
jBap/iia, and itis brought to the French ports; the 
price of it varies from frs. 1-50 to 2 fr. the kilog. 
On the Congo one^could buy them anywhere for a few 
centimes. 
Bevond the Lusambo, on the shores of the Sankurn 
grows wild a very interesting kind of Cofee-tree, 
which seem to me new. It exists also, lam told, in 
abundance on the left bank of the Lomani, west of 
the Gandu. It is a small tree 3 to i yards high 
with branches spreading out often over the streams, 
with fine leaves larger than those of the Liberian 
coffee, and small flowers, smaller than those of the 
Arabian variety. The berries are of medium size, the 
■eeds rather small and regular and have a very 
delicate aroma. For several days I drank coffee of 
this kind that had been gathered towards Gandu and 
it was excellent. 
M. Middegh assures me that this coffee abounds in 
the woods on the left bank of the Lomani, and is 
even cultivated in certain villages. This variety has 
been cultivated, first fey the Arabs, and then by M, 
Gillain at Lusambo station, where there were about 
600 trees at the time of my visit. In the same 
plantation there were some Liberian coffee trees 
planted at the same time, but which had not 
developed so well as this wild kind. I attribute this 
to the nature of the soil of Lusambo : a siliceous 
earth, rich in vegetable soil for 20 or 30 centimetres, 
down. In such land one must give up Liberian in 
favour of the new kind, accustomed to grow on the 
sandy soils so common in the basins of the upper 
Kassai, the Sackuru and the Lomani. This coffee 
geems to me to have a great future before it, especially 
after the southern portion of the great forests is 
opened up to cultivation. 
We are already acquainted with several of the use- 
ful plants of the great African forests. First comea 
the Landolphia, or india-rubber creeper ; there are 
certainly several varieties, the one that seems to me 
to predominate hag stalKs that attain perhaps to a 
diameter of 20 centimetres, large leaves and medium- 
aized fruit. The latex gives about half its volume 
of rubber. It is this extraordinary richness which has 
enabled M. Rue, a State functionary, to succeed in «, 
preparation of rubber which had been vainly attempted 
in the Congo. A company had been trying to prepare 
large Inmps or masses, but without success, until 
then. M- Eue'a method is as follows :— The rubber 
gathered from the stems is brought to a place in the 
forest where it is poured into wooden or zinc recep- 
tacles. Boxes that had been used in packing up 
cartridges have been used : they are 50 to 70 centimetres 
long, 25 wide and 7 to 10 centimetres deep. Left for toma 
hours, at night, the latex coagulates ; it does so more 
rapidly and regularly it it is slightly warmed. It is 
necessary to knead the coagulated latex to draw out 
the water or otherwise make cavities in the mass. 
That is the worst defect in the rubber thus pre- 
pared. It would bo better not to m; ke such larga 
cakes, and to have them only 8 to 10 centimes thick^ 
For it is indispensable to dispel most of the imbibed 
water by exposing the blocks for some months in 
airy sheds. The proximity of river banks, especially 
if they are subject to frequent fogs, is bad. Mr. Rue'g 
method could not be adopted with latex poor in 
rubber, such as is collected by the lake Leopold, and 
especially in the districts of the equator. In 1895 the 
Arab zone produced nearly 300 tons of rubber. The 
production could easily have risen to 1,000 tons, if 
the Europeans had had goods in sufficient quantity in 
e:]CobangeI 
In an island of the Lualaba, above Wabundu, growsi 
ill a wild state, a kind of Coffee much like the Ara- 
bian. It is also found opposite Coquilhatville and on 
the banks of the Uelle and the tjbangi. It forms a 
shrub 6 to 18 feet high, with narrow leaves, small 
elongated beans, rather small berries of rather ir- 
regular shape owing to there being often three berries 
in a bean. The colour of the berry is grey, and there 
is so little aroma that many berries are required to 
produce a fair cup of coffee. 
At Wanie Kukula, I saw in the forests another 
kind of wild Coffee whose reputation has no longer 
to be made : Liberian Coffee living in the forest 
under the shade of great trees. There are trees in 
flower 30 to 40 feet high, the trunks of which measured 
15 to 25 centimetres in diameter 3 feet from the 
ground. They bore branches only at the summit of 
the stems, ■s;hich is explained by the struggle for 
light of the denizens of the forest. The seeds are a 
little smaller than those of the cultivated Liberian 
trees. In every point the wild and the cultivated 
Liberian resemble one another, and in a plantation 
of 5 to 6 hundred trees near by, it was not possible 
to distinguish them. The trees belonged to some 
Arab chiefs to whom the Commandant Lothaire had 
advised the cultivation of wild coffee and had given 
seeds of the cultivated variety. 
We must note then the existence, in their wild 
state, of three different kinds of coffee in the Congo 
State, and two of these have a great economic im- 
poitance. For if equatorial Africa is the home of 
these precious plants, there is no doubt that they 
may be cultivated there with success. To satisfy 
oneself, it is sufficient to visit the plantations of 
Wabundu, and especially those of Stanley Falls. At 
the latter station, 400 trees were planted in 1890 on 
the recent deposits of the left bank of the river. 
They are very fine and were covered with berries 
when I passed ; one of these trees was photographed 
after it had been stripped. The fruits weighed 21 
kilog. (47 lb9.) which corresponds to about 3 kilo, of 
coffee (7 Ib.J After the Arab campaign, coffee plant- 
ing was resumed vigorously under the direction of M. 
Rom. Last year there were more than 5,500 plants 
•ver a year old and | yds. high and growing vigorously. 
From observations made at the station since 1893, 
it is found that it rains all the year, and that there 
are only 2 months (February and July, and sometimes 
also January) in which rain is less abundant, but 
there is ne\er more than an interval of 10 or 12 days. 
At Romee, great fertility was attributed to some 
sandy land formerly cultivated by the Arabs. It was 
really owing to the burning of forest vegetation 
there ; in a year's time some hundreds of coffee 
bushes expressed this fact most evidently, and they 
were removed to the opposite or right bank of the 
river, formed of alluvium and clay, where they 
flourish. 
The Forest Region of the Arab zone is certainly 
the richest region of the Independent State for its 
forests, its rubber, its suitability for coffee, and above 
all for the cheapness of labour. The wages are from 
Id. to 2d, per day, and the Arab rule has taught the 
people to work. 
O' 
A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE 
ENZYME IN TEA. 
(Continued from pac/e 58J:.) 
Enzyme and light, 
According to Reynolds Green there is some relation 
between the quantity of enzyme in growing leaves 
and light, He states (page 404) that bright sunlight 
was found to have a powerfully destructive influence 
on the enzyme, and that other observers had noticed 
that there was more enzyme in leaves gathered early 
in the morning than late in the evening. Presuming 
the enzyme in tea has some effect on quality or 
flavour, it would, according to the above observations, 
