286 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [October r, 1891. 
corn for its productioD. Taking into aficont the 
nutrimeut in each, and the compariitive prices of 
the two OB an average, the i)ork is about three times 
as costly a food as the eggp, while it is certainly 
less healthful. — Boston Journal of Chemistry. 
BAEK AND DflUG REPORT. 
(From the Chemist and Druggist.) 
London, Sept. 5th, 1891. 
AnnaTTO. — After showing more firmness recently, this 
article appears to bo agaiu falliiiij; iato its former neg- 
lected state. Good bright teed from Colombo (74 bogs) 
was bought in at 2d loJay. The other day it realised 2jd 
per ib. 
Vanilla.— Bull of sale. For common Mauritius 6s to 
78 6d was paid today, and from 2s 6d to 5s 9d for very 
low to fair long foxy Ceylon beans. It is estimated 
that the coming Mauritius crop will amount to J 3 000 
Kilos, The new crop of Mexican beans is now arriving 
upon the new York market It is reporl:ed tliat the later 
ari'ivals are of rather better quality than some of the 
earlier shipments. 
CINCHONA PLANTERS CLOSING 
THEIR RANKS. 
We announced some time ago that the Dutch Indian 
Government were about to comtrission an ofiBcial of 
the Java Government plantations to investigate the 
maDafacture of quinine in British India with a view 
to the establishment of a quinine-factory in Java. Mr. 
Van Leersum, the ofBcial in question, is probably 
by this time on Lis way to British India, where ho 
is certain to receive from tl:e heads of the British 
Goverumont plantations every possible assistance 
in the discharge of his mission. The Britifh 
Indian Government has always shown itself exceed- 
ingly liberal in allowing other nations to participate 
in the benefits of its industrial experiments ; and, on 
the other hand, the Dutch Indiaa Govprument has 
on more than one recasion rendered valuable assistance 
to the British authoritit-s in eupplying them with 
cinchona seed and plants. The process of quinine 
manufftctnro at the Naduvatam factory in the Nilgiri 
district has bean fully described in our issues of June 
9tb, 1888, end December 20th, 1890, and it will, there- 
fore, be enough to say that it consists in beatiog 
up a mixture of powdered bark, water (rendered alkaline 
with caustic soda), and paraffin and fusel oils in a 
revolting cylinder for three hours, then dissolving 
out the alkaloids by means of water acidulated with 
sulphurio acid, filtering the liquid through charcoal, 
and crystallising on the sulphate of quinine. The 
cost of thefiist batcn of quitjiue made at Nadu- 
vatam, calculated at the European market value of 
the bark, was Is 6d per oz., but since then it 
has probably lessened. Plant, sulphuric acid, and 
oil are naturally much dearer than in Europe; 
labour, on the other hand, costs less than J of a 
penny peroz. of sulphate of quinine in India, and may, 
perhaps, restore the equilibrium of the balance of com- 
petition. The Naduvatam factory only produces the 
insignificant total of about 65,000 oz. of quinine per 
annum, and the object of the Government is simply to 
provide the native population with a cheap febrifn^se at 
about cost price. The Naduvatam qniniue is retailed 
16 rupees per lb., or, say. Is 5;^;d per oz. The object 
of the Dutch Indian Government, however, is not to 
supply a cheap raedicit e io the Malays of their colonies, 
but to enabhi the Java planters to have their bark 
manufactured on the spot, and thus not only to .save 
nearly the whole of the freight, warehouse, and fale 
expenses now paid on the bark shipped to Amsterdam, 
but also to obtain a firm hold upon the quinine markets 
of the world. 
If th'j Java planters posfcss sufficient power of 
combination, and are lucky enough to find an hon- 
est, strong, ai.il astute buBinees-inan to hold the 
reinf, Ihcro Rectus no reason why, within two or three 
^yeais, tboy shculd not become the dominant force in 
the quinine market. Nearly all the Java plantations 
are situated within a comparatively small area on the 
west of the island, io the centre of which it is pro- 
posed to erect the factory, which will be uuder Go- 
vernment control, and receive from each planter the 
bark he grows, returuing to bim its contents in 
(juiniue salts an-i by-products, and charging, perhaps, 
a friction above the actual cost of manufacturing. 
That tliere exists among flie cinchona-planting in. 
tere;t a widespread dissatisfaction at the manner in 
which the conlrcl of the quinine market has been al- 
lowed to slip from the hands of the growers and their 
representatives into thos* of a few quickwitted Ger- 
man quinine manufacturers is abuodactly evident; 
That this feeling of impatience at their helplessness 
is rot confined to EaH Indian or South American 
planters is shown by a repo.-t which recently reached 
us from the AVtst Coast of Africa. The proprietors 
of the plautations on the Portuguese itland of Sao . 
Thome who now send all their bark to London, via 
Lisbon, are casting about, so we hear, for a process 
which will en-tkble them to send over iheir produce 
in the form of a liquor, from which the alkaloids can 
be regained in Europe, They calculate that such a 
process would save them about 20s per cwt. on each 
barrel of liquor. Aa the hark now shipped from Sao 
Thome realists only about SOs per cwt. in sale, the 
saving would be considerable. It should be stated, 
however, that the experiment has been tried upon 
more than one occasion by South American planters, 
and has proved unsuccessful. The first shipment of 
concentrated liquor from Bolivia to London was made 
about thirty years ego. The consignment remained 
for years in the docks here without finding a purchaser, 
and subsequent attempts to send over a partly-manu- 
factured article in the form of a resin werd equally 
frnitlesB. But the failure of these attempts by no 
means proves that eiforts in a similar diiecfcion could 
not succeed now. The inducemeut is greater, inas- 
much as the freight now represeuts a much larger pro- 
portion of the value of the bark than it did twenty 
jears ago ; manufacturing processes have been simpli- 
fied, and the keenest possible conapetition now prevails 
among a number of manufacturers in four or five di.f- 
ferent countries, whereas a generation ago two or three 
British and French house.";, by simply disocuntenancing 
an innovation which they did rot like, could effectually 
bar Its success. The erection of plaut iu Peru for the 
mHnufacture of cocaine in a crude form has proved 
snfBcieutly successful to alter the conditions of the trade 
in one important drug, and thii anxiety of even the 
most insignificant and backward foreign Governments 
to promote the establishment of industrial works in 
their territories may similarly affect the trade in other 
drugs in future. 
Bur, apart from the establishment of a quinine- 
factory, there are indications that the Java planters 
are determirjed to endc-avour to assert the power which 
effective combination would place iu their hands. 
With the season which commenced on July 1st, Java 
is taking precedence over Ceylon as a oinchona-pro- 
duoiug country. The figures of the actual exports from 
Java and Ceylon, both reduced to English lb,, and 
both taken for the year on June 30;h— the closing date 
of the Java a'ason— show that in the season just 
brought to a close Ceylon still gained a Pyrrhic victory 
in the matter of weight, the figures footincr up as 
follows: — 
1890-91 1889 90 1888-89 
English Lb, Eoglssh Lb, English Lb. 
Ceylon .. 6 900,000 8,600.000 11,890,000 
Java ... 6,000,000 5,225,000 4,857,000 
But as the Java bark contains considerably more 
quinine than that from Ceylon, Java has actually been 
u greiter quinine-producer than Ceylon for at least 
twelve months. 
The principal planters' association of Java has just 
published a most valuable return of the prospective 
prodnction of quiuino bark in the island for the next 
two seasoLS. That return will be found in another 
column. At the meeting of the association at which 
it was made public a resolution was also adopted de- 
