March i, 1892.] 
THf TROPJCAt AGR!CULTUR!8T, 
6«7 
JAVA TEA BEING PREPARED AND 
PASSED OFF A3 CHINA IN BATAVIA. 
Visitota to Java even more than in the case of 
Penang and Siogapore must be struck by the pre- 
poaderancQ of the Ohinesa element in the population 
of Batavia. To meet, the t'istes of this population, 
" an ingenious device " ha8 been adopted by aome 
Java Chinamen, I'or a brief description of which we 
are inde'ited to a correspondent, who writes ; — 
In the last number of the " Teysmania " which you 
were kind enough to send me there appears an inter- 
esting article headed " Thee-vervalsolnng op groote 
schaal te Oheribon " (Tea adulteration on a large 
scale at Oheribon). It is not what woixld be generally 
called "adulteration" in the ordinary sense of the 
term, but the preparation of inferior kinds of Java tea, 
by scenting it with flowers and putting it up in 
packages with labels in the Chinese characters setting 
forth that it is made in China. It is sold to the large 
Chinese population in Java and to the Javanese as 
China tea, of superior quality. As there is an import 
duty of 10c. (of a guilder) on China tea, this acts as 
a protecting duty to those engaged in the trade. The 
writer of the article gives a full account of the mode of 
preparation. If you think that a translation of the 
article would be suitable to the T. A. or any of your 
publications, I shall be glad to translate it, and to send 
you the translation. As this business must cause a 
certain loss of revenue it is probable that the public 
prosecutor will come down on the industrious, ingenious 
and unscrupulous Chinaman. 
We shall be glad to have the translation. 
«> 
THE CEYEON TEA PLANTATIONS 
COMPANY AND PEEAK. 
We could not say with truth that we regret the 
deoision coma to at the meeting of the above- 
named Company to abandon the idea of under- 
taking oo&ee planting in Perak. It is not that 
we should not wish well to any enterprise of the 
kind if it were undertaken by a Company that 
was wholly independent of planting or other pur- 
suits in Ceylon ; for it is unfortunately now the 
ease that we have no euoh prospect before us of 
the resuscitation of coffee planting in this island 
that we need fael any jealousy of efforts being 
made to grow our former staple in any other 
country. But we have in former times given our 
reasons for deprecating the association of the name of 
Oeylon with enterprised conducted without itsf boun- 
daries. Most of our readers will recollect that when 
the aff.-tirs of the Ctylon Company first became in- 
volved that Company was for years buoyed up by 
the large profits it was making out of its in- 
vestments in this colony. All the time these pro- 
fits were being made here, things were going 
from bad to worse in Mauritius, where the Com- 
pany had had to take over a number of sugar 
estates- on which the thou Oriental Bank had 
made largo and dangerous advances. Year 
afier year ihtse estates were worked at a dead 
loss, but the actual position of the Company's 
affairs was concealed by the announcement it 
was still able to make of substantial dividends, 
the entire, and more than the entire, of which 
had been earned in connexion with Oeylon. When 
the final crash came consequent upon the ill- 
adviHod stoppage of the Oriental Bank— a stoppage 
which we all now know to have been unnecessary 
and timorous — it was natural for the home public, 
unacquainted as it was with the full find pecul ar 
oircumstauoes of the case, to lay the whole onus 
of the failure at the door of unfortunate Ceylon. 
It, is needless to s ly how seriously this mis- 
oo.noeption alTcuted the credit of thif colony 
at a timo when the maialenaaQe of that oiedit 
was of the most particular importance to us ; and 
had the directors of the Oeylon Plantations 
Company obtained the warrant of their shareholders 
to graJt upon their parent stem an enterprise in a 
comparatively untried region for coffee planting 
such as is Perak, we should have been in constant 
dread lest a recurrence of similarly damaged credit 
might have to be facea. It is for this reason that, ss 
we have said, we can feel no regret that the share- 
holders of the Ceylon Plantations Company have 
vetoed the proposal submitted lo them by their 
Board of Direction. We suspect that most of 
these shareholders either have, or have had, some 
connection with Ceylon, and in that case we have 
little doubt that they retain in their minds a 
painful recollection of the result to what we may 
term a foreign association with the name of this 
island which we have above quoted, and it is 
certain that their deoision to refuse compliance with 
their directors' recommendation would have been 
largely influenced by such a recollection. Nor, 
when we come to consider other points in the 
matter submitted to the meeting, can we feel 
surprised at the disfavour with which it was 
viewed. The generally expressed opinion seems to 
have been that the suggested enterprise was of a 
speculative character. It was all very well for the 
Chairman to deny this ; but all unprejudiced men 
will, we think, agree that the commencement of 
a new, or nearly new, industry in a comparatively 
untried country must necessarily partake of a 
speculative character. Into such an undertaking 
it was only natural that a body of share- 
holders secured by present investment in a 
known and well-tried industry should object, for 
this alone, it for no other reason, to see the character 
of their existing undertaking altogether changed. 
The Lireotors, when Srnding out the circular in 
which their proposals as to Perak were first mooted, 
mentioned as one of the chief inducements that they 
could hold out that, being already the employers 
of some sis thousand coolies in Oeylon, they would 
be in a position superior to the difQculties at 
present attendant on the labour supply of Perak. 
But it must be assumed that, if the Company 
possesses this amount of labour, the whole of it is 
needed for the cultivation of its Ceylon estates. In 
that case it could not afford to transfer any 
portion of it to Perak, nor could the coolies be 
sent to that country without fresh and special 
agreements being entered into with them, and it 
would be at least questionable if any large propor- 
tion of them would care to have their services trans- 
ferred to a new and, to them, an unknown country 
But quite apart from all reasons which may have 
actuated the shareholders towards their refusal of 
their Directors' propositions, there stands out pro- 
minently the one fact that, by that refusal, this 
Colony is saved from the chances of once 
again being made the stalking horse for a 
speculative and possibly losing investment. 
EriTECT OF THE GOLLAPSE OV THE FoOCHOW TeA 
Trade.— The I''ooc/(Oi(! Fcho of 2nd Jan. says: — 
/Vccounts reach us from K.ienguing-foo of most dar- 
ing robberies. Bands of thirty or forty ruffians enter 
the houses of wealthy people, bhndfold and gag the 
unhappy inmates, and then help themselves, and 
make off with all that is best worth having of the 
valuable contents. This is described to us as one 
of tho results of the decline of the tea trade. Many 
hundreds of men (our informant said thousands), 
hitherto earning an honest living from it, lu-o now 
driven froju sheer hunger to become biirghirs and 
highway roobers. 
