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A GEEMAN PEOFFESSOR ON INDIAN 
DEUG'-CULTUEE. 
About three years ago Dr. Alexander Techirch, then 
B " Privatdoceut," or University coacli, in Berlin, and 
already well known as au autborifcy on pharmaco- 
logical and botanical subjects, undertook a voyage to 
the British and Dutch colonies in the East with the 
chief object of gathering on the spoi information 
concerning those economic plants, the promcts of 
which represent the bulk of the value of the whole 
Eastern trade. After his return to Europe Dr. Tschirch 
published several short notes on his Indian expe- 
riences, abetraofca of which we have upon several oc- 
casions placed before our readers. It wag also an- 
nounced that the doctor (who has since become profeEsor 
at Berne University) was busy upon the regulation 
book of travels, the production of which is as in- 
tegral a part of well-conducled modern travel as the 
process of rumination is essential to the digestive 
functions of a well-conditioned member of the bovine 
family. The doctor's book has been lot.g in making 
its oppearanoe, but it has come at last, and we 
hail it with satisfaction as a welcome contribution, 
to the historiography of Indian economic plants. 
The professor on his travels has preserved an open 
mind, and he shows himself in his book remarkably and 
pleasantly free from the dogmatio assertion of superi- 
ority, which is often so aggressive a feature of books 
written by scientists upon general eubjects. To defcribe 
in full detail and from personal observation all, or 
even the majority of Indian ecoDomic plants, would 
be the task of a lifetime. It is being accomplished 
by scientists in British India ; but Dr. Tschirch does 
not pretend to have accomplithed anything of the 
kind during his limited tojourn in the tropics. He 
claims for Lis b;;ok no further value than it actually 
does possess — that is, as an Bccount ol a trained 
botanist and pharmacognosist in his vitits to the 
principal producing centres of some tropical products — 
many of them staple articles of commerce, suoh as 
cinchona, coffee, tea, cocoa, rice, cloves, nutmegs, 
and mace, rubber and popper ; others, articles of much 
less mecey vblue, but not on that account less inter- 
esting to the pharmacist — benzoin, for instance, cubebs, 
cardamoms, citronella oil, and cinnamon. Dr. Tschirch, 
himself expresses his regret that circumstances pro- 
vented him from investigating, as he had wished to 
do, the culture of tobacco in Sumatra, and that of 
indigo and sugar in Java. Blalarial fever, that most 
faithful t-avelling companion of the European in 
tropical travel, seldom permitted the author to work 
as he would have wished. Another obstacle to the 
acquisition of reliable information lay in the 
ignorance which prevails, especially in Java, 
concerning all cultures in which the informant 
is not perfonally interested. Cubebs, for instance, 
are muoli grown in the residency of Bantam, in western 
Java; but although Dr. Tschirch tried as much as he 
could to get accurate information about the culture 
of this drug dnring his sojourn in the adjoining 
residency, or province, no one o uld te!l him anything 
trustworthy about it, and Bantam i self ho had no 
opportunity of visiting. Steadfastly adhering tD the 
sound principle of describing only what he actually 
saw, the doctor has rigidly excluded all hearsay infor- 
mation from hia book— a resolve which mnst often have 
been a painful one to him, though it has rendered his 
book much more reliable. 
Dr. Tsoliirch, who, be it observed, as a German-Swiss, 
travelled without any prejudices in favour of one of 
the two great coUuising Powers of the East, the 
British end the Dutch, thus sums up a differ- 
eooe in the planting and trading habits of the 
two nations which ptruclc bim most strongly all 
through this travels : — Both nations work with 
the fame object of utilising their colonies to 
the groRtest advantnge, but they attain this object 
in very different ways, and they work on 
totally dilliroiit principles. If we glance through 
the export list^ of the, thrco principal ports of the 
Southern East— Colombo, Singapore, and Biitavia — 
gur attuutiou ia iiumediatcly attraotoi] by the stolid 
jteadiness of the Daloh, and the almost lightning 
apidity of the changeableness of the English colo- 
nial modes of cultivation. While the Dutchman 
sticks with extreme stubbornness to the cultivation 
of any culture be has once introduced, and only 
relinquishes it with evident pain and under inces- 
sant doubting of heart, the Englishman no sooner 
begms to feel doubts of the success of bia undertaking 
than he ia prepared to relinquish it immediately. 
Thus, to give an instance, the market variations and 
the ever-sinking price of quinine have not been able 
to deter the Hollanders from continuing to plant cin- 
j choua in Java upon a scale increasing year by year. 
I The action of the English in Ceylon is the precise 
j opposite of this mode of procedure.* The first ship- 
ments of Ceylon coffee are sent to London, and fetch 
high prices. Immediately an exodua of Anglo-Indian 
planters to Ceylon commences ; everybody wants to 
grow coffee and does grow it. Kesult: a 'rush 
into coffee,' with scamped and careless methods 
of cultivation ; f then a coffee-disease declares itself. 
Planter after planter ' cracks up,' and when it is 
also found that the formerly despised cinchona cul- 
ture, into which, without much ceremony, everyone haa 
straightway thrown himself, will not prosper as it was 
expected, tea is taken np after short deliberation. 
What the Hemileia haa left standing of cinchona 
and coffee plantations is uprooted, and replaced by 
tea on such a colossal scale that the tea export rises 
between 1877 and 1887 from 3,500 lb. to 22,000,000 lb. ! 
Needless to say such haate precludes the careful 
selection of one's soil and situation ; nor is it possible 
to weed the forest ground carefully. J This is the 
reason that every visitor uoticea at once an essential 
difference between the plantations in the two islands. 
In Ceylon rotting tree-trunks and numberless stumps 
all through the plantation, in Java everything neat 
and clean ; the lines more carefully drawn, nowhere 
remains of trees or stumps." The superior energy of 
the Englishman Dr. Tschirch illustrates by calling 
attention to our occupation of Singapore, the entrance- 
gate to Eastern Asia, and to the commercial life-and. 
death struggle between that port and Batavia. Sin- 
gapore, in spite of its faults as a harbour, attracts every 
year more producta from the Malay Archipelago. It 
is already the most important emporium in the world 
for pepper and gambier, and draws growing supplies of 
rubber and gutta-percha, damar gum and nut- 
megs, benzoin and rattans, Juat as the har- 
bour of Batavia slowly becomes choked with 
sand and retraota further and further from the 
town, so the export trade of Batavia runs to 
sand, choked by the powerful ccmpetition of Singa- 
pore. 
But though Singapore is very favourably situated, 
the author considers that if a European Power would 
seize the little is'and of Pulu Way and its two 
snoall sist r is'ands just at the north coast of 
Sumatra, at the opening of the Straits of Malacca, 
and create a gocd harbour there, Singapore would 
be doomed in its turn. Pulu Way has immense 
coal-mines, and Dr. Tschirch, who is a colonial enthu- 
siast, calls upon Germany to seize the group and 
lead the way. Unfortunately for him, his deaire is 
not likely to be gratified. The German Government 
has had enough of colonial enterprise at present, and 
recent information from the Dutch Indies states that 
the Netherlands Government have decided to occupy 
Pulu Way, and explore its coal mines and that the 
French and Russian Governments have already pro- 
mised the custom of their mail-stenmers to the coaling- 
station. Singapore, therefore, may again take heaitof 
grace. She is saved for the present.— C'AewfVj and 
Druijcjift. 
* For the good reason that the Dutch are iu a 
ijositiou to supply the world with the best species.— 
Ed. T. a. 
■\ An utterly unfounded charge. — Ed. T. A. 
X There are no plantations iu the world better 
weeded Ibiin those of Ceykn, although the half-burnt 
forest trees are left on tie ground to supply fuel aud 
mauure.— Eu. 'L\ .i. 
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