November i, i8go.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 
The vellum paper manufaotui’ed by the Insatsu- 
kyoku deserves to rank among the curiosities of 
Japan. It is made from a tree called Mitsumata. 
The tree is easily cultivated and grows quickly. 
At three years of age, the pruning can be used 
for paper making. In appearance the vellum paper 
is rich and glossy, its colour cream-like and its 
texture line. It is as pliable and_ thin as the best 
writing parer, but so enormous in its strengtn 
that four peop'e can grasp the corners of a sheet 
and raise a man standing on it. —il/addf/nscar hlews. 
The Double Coco-nut.— T here are seV'^ral Nuts 
of this extraordinary Palm, Ledoicea Seynhellarum, 
in an advanced stage of germination at Kew. One 
of the m has already produced a leaf, and has a 
mass of healthy roots, whilst two others are burst- 
ing into le ,f. There is now, therefore, a prospect 
of°our seeing this Palm among the many species 
which are the most striking features in the great 
F ilm house. The process of germination in the 
Lodoicea is exception dly slow. In its native habitat 
the Nut is said to be about two years, after fall- 
ing on to the ground, before it produc s its first 
leaf. The leaf on the Kew seedling is ft. long 
by 2 ft. broad, and it is folded double laterally, 
so that if spread out it would measure 4 feet. 
It is divided" along the top into about forty seg- 
ments the texture is unusually stiff and leathery 
even for a PeAm.^Gardeners' Chronicle, Sept. 1.3th. 
India the Home of the Sus.arcane. — 
In the great German work of Dr. Lippruann, 
according to the Sugar Cane , — 
He quotes Decandoll ' and M quel to the effaot that 
it is undoubtedly a faet that the whole of the wild 
kinds of the genus Saccliarum, perhaps with one single 
exception, belong to India. The whole of the varieties 
of the true sugar oane (Saccharum offioinarnm) even 
those which by many botanists are regarded as indepen- 
dent varieties, r,a, for instance, the Cliiuese sugar cure 
(Sicchii-um siuense) point to the same origin. Bota- 
nical reasons also require us to look for the home of 
the sugar onne in India, and the occurrence of almost 
every wild variety of saocharum in Bengal, the oldest 
name of which— Gsura or Gauda— is derived from gada 
— is derived fr'Un guda or raw sugar (modern, poor ?) 
and whose inhabitants cal! themselves “ the men of the 
red sugar cane,” points in the same direction. 
The original stock of the sugar cane is, wo are told, 
no longer known, nor is it believed to exist in a wild 
state. This deduction is based on the united testimony 
of all who have written on the subject. Dr. von Lipp- 
mann alludes to the idea formerly prevalent that the 
sugar cane was apogamous, and to the experiments 
and discoveries of Soltwedel and Harrison, but does 
not consider that any of these shake the theory of an 
Indian origin. 
The mPiition of sugar in the earlier Indian wri- 
tings, the Institutes of Mauu, and the great epics of 
the Jfalidbhdrata and the Rdnuigani is alluded to, 
and the probable age of these disciissi d, and the name 
applied to the sugar cane and its juice are given. 
As regards the time when solid sugar was first manu- 
factured only two data can be given, viz., the recep- 
tion of sugar cane as tribute in China in the 4th con- 
turv, and a remirk of Hiueu-Thsaug, who I ravelled 
in India in the first half of the 7th century, di.stinctly 
mantioniog both syrup and solid sugar, as also tlie 
fact that solid sugar was obtained in Northern India 
from the sugar cane. From these Dr. von Lippmann 
deduoes the opinion that the discovery of solid sugar 
must have taken place between the 4th and 7th cen- 
turies, iiesrer the latter than ihe former. 
In Qonneotion with the above we would refer 
to the interesting discussion of the subject by Col. 
Yule in liis Jlohson-Jolma s. v. “Su’ar.” The 
Sakya tribe, to which Buddha belonged, claimed 
descent from the first king of Ayodhya named 
Iksvaku (in Pa'i Okkaka, Binhaloae Okfv), which 
means ‘ sugaroane.’ The Sinhalese kings claimed 
the same honour. 
3Sr 
Fugar.— In respect to the sugar crop of Guiana, 
we learn this week that competent authorities 
estimate that this year’s crop of sugar will fall 
30,000 tons below that of last year. This falling 
ofi is ascribed to the same cause as at Trinidad, 
namely, the very heavy rains. — London Grocer. 
Ceylon Entebphise is thus noticed by 
“ Peripatetic Planter” in the Indian Planters’ 
Gazette : — 
I', is grod for refl“ctioa to note how much Ceylon 
enterprise is ahead of Indian onterpriee m the Tea 
matters. Almost every day one meets with instances. 
In the smalle.st saburbau Grocers’ shops, and in all- 
sorts shops of country vilbages, one can always find 
Ceylon tea in original, estate-picked tanev paei^jges. 
It would be a rare thing to find an In Han estate-packed 
packet. Yet by this means the Ceylon men aro sure 
their Teas are not being sp iled by an admixture of 
China Tea, and that full justice is being done them, 
and that their reputation is in their ow i hands, and 
not in that of ell the intermediary between the Indian 
p'antersand the consumer. The way in which Ceylon 
estate-pi.ckad packets have become procurable in the 
smallest villages within the last year or two is really 
remarkable, and is greatly to the credit of those who 
have achieved this big task. The way, too, in wh eh 
the very much aw.ake Ceylon Association protects 
the Ceylon planters by prosecuting people making 
fraudulent a'^tempts to pass off blends ns pure Ceylon 
tea, and others using misleading names on packets, is 
an example to the f. 1 . D. A. 
Then the famous “ Linton,” who from selling hams, 
sausages, &e., by the million, has of late become .?,lso 
one of the largest retail vendors of tea intheU. K. 
has been “ got at” by Ceylon enterprise, and ho is off 
out to buy estates in Oeylou. His agency alone will 
be a stupendous advertisement f -r Ceylon teas. 
Science and Pbactice. — From the proceed- 
ings of the American Association of Nurserymen, aa 
reported in “Garden and Forest” we quote an 
opinion on pruning and pollarding, which eeema 
interesting in its bearing on tea culture and horti- 
culture generally : — 
Mr. Thomas Meehan said that it had been fifty years 
since he wrote bis first article for a horticultural paper, 
and it seemed to him, although horticulture had made 
rapid advances in all of those years, that it had not 
progressed as fai; on the scientific side as it ought to 
have done. As a praotical example of some scientific 
truths, upon which good practice is based he instanced 
the fact that fibrous roots live only a year. They do 
their work and then die. AYhcre there are a hundred 
small roots now about a young tree there will be in a 
few years only a few large ones radiating from it, like 
rail-roads on a map. These big roots alone have the 
strength to send out fibres, and the root is of no value 
to the tree until new white fibres are pro wing. There- 
fore, it maybe that a mass of fibrous roots in a tree for 
transplauting is injurious. They are weak, they have 
no vital power to put out rootlets, aud they may keep 
the soil from contact with the big roots, whicb, there- 
fore, do not find the proper medium in which to throw 
out leeding roots. Another fact which observation 
teaches is that roots die in exact propnrti.m to the 
amount of tops that are cut off. If a tree is pollarded 
nine-tenths of the roots mav die and then invite a 
fungus which spreads to the living roo‘s. It is said that 
the branches which sprout from these pollards grow 
strongly because the roots are stronger b. low them, 
but it fact they grow from the food stored up in the 
trunk, just as shoots three or four feet long eften 
grow out of logs which He by the wayside. Generally 
pollarded trees die after this operation has been fre- 
quently performed. Look, for example, at an Osage 
Orange hedge. If one of the trers at the end is allowed 
to grow it will make a trunk as bigas a man’s body in 
twenty years, while the hedge plants of the same age, 
their vital power being weak ned by constant cutting, 
aro no larg' C than a man’s wrist. Of c ur.se all prun’Ug 
is not to be condemned, although it does weaken the 
vital power of the plaut. We prune for other purposes 
than to make long lived trees. 
