July i, 1890 .] 
the TROPiCAL AGRICULTURIST. 
37 
of India’s orders quoted above at 17'49 lakhs of rupees* 
the correspondiner weight of which in the monthly 
returns published by the Government of India is 
35,567 tons. The annual statement of the trade and 
navigation of British India which gives the share con- 
tributed by each maritime province has not yet been 
received by me for 1388-89, so that the quantity ex- 
ported from the Bengal Presidency in 1888-89 is not 
known. In pi’evious years the exports from Bengal 
amounted to one-third of the total exports from India, 
Assuming that 12,000 tons were exnorted from Bengal 
in 1888-89, and that the whole of this quantity was 
supplied from these provinces, it would still represent 
only one-third of the total quantity which annually 
becomes available in those provinces through the 
normal mortality of horses and eat'le. The drain, 
however, of the export trade on the bone supply of 
any particular district cannot be measured in this way. 
The northern districts which border the sub-himalayau 
forests and are essentially pastoral districts are still 
imperfectly served by railways, and in them 
the bone trade does not exist. My inquiries lead to 
the conclusion that the trade is confined to the central 
and eastern districts lying along the East Indian and 
Oudh and Rohilkhand Railways, and that even in 
these the outlying tracts are rarely visited by the bone 
collector. The villages within a ten-miles radius of 
the railway stations mainly furnish the supply, and 
they are now being completely cleared of all old stores 
of bones which in former days used to decompose 
through a series of years near the inhabited sites. 
The home collector confines himself to breaking up 
hie spoil with a hammer so as to make it more por- 
table, and no further treatment is usuallv attempted 
by the wholesale exporter or the shirpcr. Occasionallv, 
however, the exnorter employs a dhehli or stone-mill 
ordinarilv used for grinding lime. 
At present bones are not directlv used in any form 
as manure by the native agriculturist. Indirectly, as 
they decay, a portion of the nitrogen and phosphates of 
which they are composed finds its way to the soil. But 
this process of nature is wasteful. Oaste and super- 
stition would lead the Indian cultivator to reject bone 
manures even if be were to be convinced of their utility, 
and hitherto he has been without the knowledge of or 
the means of obtaining superphosphates, the ordinary 
form in which bones are now used for manure by the 
Buronean agriculturist. The present export trade, 
therefore is economically defensible, since one portion 
of the world is thereby enabled to use with care and 
knowledge in relation to a special system of agriculture 
what another portion has for centuries allowed to go to 
wa.ste. Again, as yet it has not been proved that in 
Indian agriculture bone manures can be profitably 
employed. A maund of bone dust costs Re. 1 , thirty- 
five mannds or farmyard manure can he bought for this 
sum. According to the chemists, the 35 mannds of 
farmyard manure contain four times as much nitrogen 
as one maund of hone-dnst, and nitrogen is the element 
conspicuously deficient in Indian soils. Experiments 
with bone-dust and bone superphosphates have been 
made for a series of years on the Oawnpore Farm with 
maize and wheat crops. The general result is that, 
as compared with the standard unmanured plot, there 
has been a loss on the crop, the cost of the bone 
manure overbalancing the value of the increased pro- 
duce. This is especially the case where bone superphos- 
phates are used, owmg to the high price of sulphuric 
acid. Nothing can he inferred from these experiments 
as to the possible effect of bone-manures, on Indian 
soils other than the light loams common to the Doah 
or on special crops. ]Pit. as regards soils similar to 
that of the Oawnpore F.arm and the great staple crop 
of wheat, they su -■r'est the conclusion that the Indian 
ryot, with a ru|)oe to spend on manures, had better 
lay it out, ns at prep ot, on cnwdung or indieo refuse 
than on superphnsuhst'-a or bone-dust. In 10'>glnnd 
the peculiar value of h->ne maniire.s has been cstihlisbod 
in connection with the turnip, mnugel wuiz''!, and 
other root-cops. In India we have no turnips (save 
as a garden crtp),andthe area under carrots potatoes 
or othor root orops is very limited. The matter is 
eminently one in which the advice of a really com- 
petent chemist, on a full survey of Indian agriculture 
and a careful analysis of soils, might be most valuable. 
So much energy and enterprise, European and native 
are now engaged in ths cultivation of indigo, tea, sugar 
and jute, that auch advice would not fall oa barren 
ground , — Madras Mail, May 30th. 
THE ROMANCE OP TEA SELLING 
is surely more conspicuously illustrated ia the 
experience of Mr. Thomas J. Lipton than in that 
of any other living man. It seems that a rule of hia 
business life has been since he began to sell 
in a large way through multiplied agencies, to take 
up some one article in universal request and 
make it widely available. We refer to the mother 
country of course. Only about a year ago, did it 
strike Mr. Lipton to take up tea, and after so 
deciding, it was from reading about Ceylon and 
liking the article, that he made Ceylon tea a 
speciality. Mr. Lipton has by no means multiplied 
his tea agencies to the extent he intends : indeed 
in the Highlands of Scotland he has only lately 
opened and his forty tea packet stores in and 
around London have not all been in operation 
very tong. Nevertheless in this, his first year, 
Mr. Lipton calculates he has sold 4 millions lb. of tea. 
It is quite possible therefore, that the progress in this 
department for some time to come may be after 
a geometrical ratio, especially when America is to 
be added to Britain as the scene of operations. 
In the old country, “ Lipton’s packets ” consist 
of a blend, the preponderating tea being Ceylon, 
and although he has become the purchaser of 
Ceylon plantations, Mr. Lipton is not quite certain 
about entirely giving up the blend. He will, of 
course, add a packet business in pure Ceylon tea 
direct from the plantations, no doubt at a higher 
price than the “blend.” 
But in the case of America, beginning in a 
new field altogether, and with the object of winning 
so many people from a vitiated taste for faced and 
adulterated China and Japan teas, to the appre- 
ciation of a really superior article, Mr. Lipton is 
quite ready, we uuderstaud, to pledge himself to 
deal only in pure Ceijlon tea. This is a most 
important fact ; for if this great dealer begins on 
the principle of spending £15,000 in advertising 
Ceylon tea— and Ceylon tea only— from Chicago 
westwards to Denver and San Fransisco, north- 
wards into Canada, east to Philadelphia, and 
south to New Orleans — he will be doing [more 
for this Colony in a short space of time 
than our Tea Fund Committee and the Cey- 
lon -American Company could accomplish probably in 
a score of years. It becomes a question then 
whether the Ceylon tea planters should not do 
all they can to recognise, encourage, and back up 
Mr. Lipton. He evidently has abundant command 
of “the sinews of war”— he will want no aid in 
capital or tea. But it may be a question whether 
the North-Araerioan Continent should not be left 
entirely to Mr. Lipton’s “Ceylon Agencies” and 
that our Tea Fund Committee should pledge 
themselves to encourage no competition. The 
necessary corollary from such a decision would 
he the winding-up and withdrawal of the 
Ceylon-American Tea Company, and this could 
best be arranged we should think by Mr. 
Tipton taking over the business— the New York, 
shop, stock, stalf and goodwill as they stand ? We 
shonld think the directors and shareholders 
would only too gladly enter into such an 
arrangement, if a proposal were mado to 
them so soon as Mr. Lipton has seen what 
has been done in New York, and decided on hi,-; 
