December i, iSgt.] THE TROPICAL AQRIOULTUmST. 
401 
slaughter of game, and we trust that without Btop 
ping the collection of the fruits of the ixdai and 
hereliyancldun trees and of honey it may be possible 
to prevent the damaging or destruction of valuable 
timber trees. 
We feel sure the larger proportion of our reaaers 
will share the interest we have felt in this report,— 
which so largely supplements the information con- 
tained in reports of the Botanic Gardens,— and will 
feel that we only performed our duty, especially to 
the agricultural enterprise of the colony, m com- 
menting so fully, and quoting so freely as we have 
done. Hitherto the operations of the Forest De- 
partment of Ceylon has been mainly tentative and 
preparatory, while the obstacles to be overcome 
have been and are many and serious. But now in 
each successive year we may look for increasingly 
better results, not only in immediate money returns, 
but in the foundations laid for future wealth, in 
existing forests improved in respect to natural 
reproduction and plantations- formed not only of 
such valuable exotics as mahogany, teak, padouk, 
the gums and acacias of Australia, and the cedars 
and pines of the Himalayas, but of the choicest of 
our numerous indigenous trees, such as ebony, satin- 
wood, halmilla, dun, &o. Amongst the indirect 
benefits of the operations of the department we 
must class the largely sanitary effects of running 
roads and paths through the forest and letting light 
and air into pestiferous jungles where previously 
No beam of the sun or the sweet moon has entered 
with cheerful and purifying effect. 
Already at the end of 1890, there were forest cart 
roads opened equal in mileage to 175 in the Central 
Province and 92-5 in the Northern. Bridle paths 3 
miles in the Central Province and 7 '05 in Uva. 
Inspection and export paths 8-9 in the Western Pro- 
vince, 3 in the Central and 4 in Uva : a grand total 
of roads and paths equal to n5'45 miles. And 
this process must go on at an accelerated rate as 
the forests are exploited and their produce conveyed 
to the various depots. Ceylon is already one of 
the best roaded countries in the world, and what 
with railways and principal roads formed by borrow- 
ed money, votes from revenue and appropriations 
of money and labour under the provisions of the 
Thoroughfares Ordinance,— with grant-in-aid roads 
and new roads and paths opened by 'the Forest 
department, the railway and road map of Ceylon 
for 1900 ought to be a scene of ramified scorioga, 
auon only as the maps of very advanced countries 
can equal or surpass. Buildings constructed by the 
Forest Depirtment will meanwhile follow the roads 
in opening up and imparting life and health to the 
jungle solitudes, which, by and by will be solitudes 
no longer. 
A VISIT TO WALDHOF NEAR 
MANNHEIM : 
THE GREAT QUININE AND CHEMICAL 
WORKS OF MESSRS. G. F. BOHRINGER 
& SOEHNE. 
I remember when on a visit to John Eliot 
Howard of Cinchona fame, during which the good 
old host treated me with the utmost hospitality 
and kindness, hinting at a wish to see over his 
far-famed Quinine-preparing Works, and very 
quickly realizing that the rule of " no visitors 
allowed " was not likely to be broken through in 
this case. All the greater therefore was my 
appreciation o£ the cordiality with which in 
responee to the letter of introduction from Mr. 
Bohringer of Colombo, forwarded from Munich, his 
oouBin, the head of the Waldhof house, intimated 
Lis readiness to meet and show us his extensive 
wotkfl. 01 course, when Quinine was from lOs to 
51 
£1 an ounce, these were no doubt weightier 
reasons for guarding the process of manufacture 
or extraction as foil owed by the best houses 
from the observation of outsiders ; while now that 
the valuable febrifuge has tumbled down to a 
fraction of its former value, and that only large 
capitalists with expensive machinery and a skillea 
staff capable of manufacturing large quantitiee 
very cheaply can hope to make any profit, is 
matters very little who is taken through the 
works. Still, there are very delicate processes at 
work, and the rule is followed of privacy in 
most chemical manufactories, the staff being 
specially bound in their terms of service. All 
the more courteous, therefore, was the readiness 
with which we were permitted and convoyed 
through the very extensive and interesting 
establishment to which we are now about to refer. 
We learned incidentally that the grand- 
father of the present head of the house 
lived in Stuttgart, and there interested him- 
self as a practical chemist, but it was his son 
who first established a Quinine and Chemical 
Manufactory and who at length located himself 
at Mannheim until a large fire destroyed his 
establishment there, and the firm of Messrs. 0. 
F. Bohringer & Soehne opened in Waldhof on 
a site facing the Rhine and admirably adapted 
for the purpose in view. Mr. Bohringer, senior, 
died last year, leaving his son, now in the prime 
of life (about 35 years), at the head of the very 
extensive and responsible business associated with 
his firm. 
On our visit, we travelled in the early afternoon 
of a pleasant sunshiny day — the last in September 
— from Heidelberg to Mannheim. There we were 
met, and leaving our impedimenta at this statioUi 
took another train to Waldhof — a wayside station 
chiefly for the service of two or three large 
factories (of glass as well as chemicals) and the 
village connected therewith. The country was 
everywhere flat though backed by the hill-raDges 
in and beyond Heidelberg seen in the distance. 
In walking from the station to the great Chemical 
Factory, wa drew near to the Ehine, here by no 
means so important a river as it is lower down. 
We notice that the soil is extrejiely poor and 
shallow, and even where under cultivation, there 
are numerous patches intemingled, apparently 
useless for crop-bearing and left untouched. On suoii 
soil, a site for Chemical Works may well be found. 
The Waldhof establishment has formed a village 
of its own ; for notwithstanding improved processes 
by which one worker can now do the work ot 
twenty, the firm has altogether, some 300 em- 
ployees in this its leading establishment, apart 
from its branches at Milan and Amsterdam, a 
mercantile house recently established in New York 
and the Ceylon Agency. The first noticeable 
feature as we approach the works is a huge mass, 
almost hill, of dark brown refuse which is being 
constantly added to from trucks carried by a wire 
tramway across the roadway from the works to 
the top of the long mound. "That we call Ceylon" 
— said Mr. Bohringer — ' for indeed it may all be- 
long to your island, representing in fact the greater 
part of the cinchona bark imported from Ceylon, 
— the bulky residuum after the extraction of the 
quinine alkaloids. No other evidence was needed 
as to the extensive operations of the firm 
than was presented in this great mass — equal in 
length and height to one of the larger embank- 
ments on the Oeylon railway — and all the result of 
about seven years' work. I learned afterwards 
from the leading Doctor-Chemist of the Works 
that everything possible had been done to utilize 
this Btull, but in vain : it does injury rather than 
