448 
The tropical ACRiCULTURlST. [December i, i^gc. 
of the bundle under the arm when he said it was I 
arecanut and as things would have it, the taywer said ! 
that he wanted a chew of hotel badly and both ftlt 
the bundle when the accused dropped it in the hands 
of the latter and ran away. The evidence for the com- 
plaint proved conclusively the possession and the charge 
having been read and explained the defendant said he 
had canse to shew and wanted time to get his witnesses 
which was allowed, the accused in the meantime bring 
remanded till Friday next. 
The next case was that in which one Podia was 
charged with the possession of some Cacao partly cured. 
The accused in his statement said that he bad pur- 
chased the Cacao from Kandi Oarpen (accused in the 
previous case) and had paid him R5. This boy used 
to go about in the Yatawatte vi lage from house to 
house trading in dry fish, salt and other sundries, at 
the same time purchasing whatever he gets from the 
villagers and from what could have been gathered. 
Podia was a ready purchaser from Kandi Carpen ; this 
case is also fixed for Friday next, Podia being re- 
manded. 
It is an admitted fact that cardamoms of the 
Malabar variety are not grown within a radius of six 
miles from (he Yatawatte estate with the exception 
of a few bushes on Nawagala which does not give 
a crop worth curing, neither are there any bushes of 
this variety in the village. 
As regards Cacao there are but very few trees 
scattered about the village and not a single villager 
could have the quantity taken up and none of them 
know the process of curing as this quantity had been. 
« 
Pearl Fishing is still carried on — says a 
home journal of Oot. 31st — on the Tay, though 
by no means to the extent that it used to be. 
Last week a brooch was presented to a lady of the 
neighbourhood in which were forty Tay pearls, six 
of them being large and valuable. 
Tea and Progress.— Another sign of social pro- 
gress is the new Tee-to-tum cafds in the East-end. 
A quiet elegant and almost artistic one may be 
found in the Commercial-road, end a less preten- 
tious but very pleasant one exists in the Whitechapel- 
road. These oafds are founded and managed by 
Mr. Buchanan, a wealthy tea-merchant, who is quite 
an enthusiast for social reform. Ho does not desire 
to make money out of the enterprise, but to provide 
an attractive place which shall be at the same 
time restaurant and club for the East-end masses. — 
L, (& C. Express- Oct. 31st. 
Telegraph Lines are subject to a great 
variety of pests. In the neighbourhood of Rio 
Janeiro, says the London Globe, there is an orchid 
that flourishes on the excrement of birds which 
encrusts the wire and the “earth contacts,” re- 
sulting in leakage of the current to the ground, 
which is a fruitful source of trouble. Again, in 
Japan, where the lines run along roads bordered by 
cryptomeria trees, the large webs of a spider, drip- 
ping with rain or dew, frequently interrupt the 
traffic. In Norway the poles are often perforated 
by a large woodpecker, which is supposed to mistake 
the humming of the wire for a nest of insects in 
tlie wood; and we now learn from Arizona, U S., 
that tlie green woodpecker of California, Melauerpns 
formicivorns, is in the habit of digging cavities in 
the red cedar poles. In these it builds its nest or 
stores the larva; upon which it feeds. Of oourse, 
the poles are snapped across by the high gales. 
In Ceylon, branches of coconut palms tailing on the 
wires sometimes drag tliein down, and on the 
Wilson’s Bungalow road, a vegetable growth has 
been pointed out to us on the wire, arising doubt- 
less from bird droppings, which interferes with 
iuEulutioD. 
Paris Green and London IT'rple. — The 
Gardeners' Chronicle hears of much recklessness 
in America in the use of this poisonous 
tree dressing, and others deleterious to human 
beings and grazing animals. The requisite 
quantity is often greatly exceeded, thereby adding 
to the cost and labour of its application. One farmer 
used it over a crop of cabbages, and caused serious 
illness to those who partook of them. Too much 
caution can scarcely be taken in the employment of 
these preparations of arsenic. Sulphate of copper 
is somewhat less poisenous, and it is almost equally 
efflcaoious when used against the Oodlin-moth and 
mildew. This is what has been recommended in 
a mixture for green bug on eoiiee. 
Sea-water as the Source of Gold. — We 
were aware that silver in quite appreciable quantity 
was diffused in the ocean, but now we learn from 
a paper read before the British Association that 
to the same source we must look for the origin of gold. 
Mr. J. Logan Lolley, f.g.s. , stated 
— that v;hile geological evidence is against its igotous 
origin, all the gold of all the rocks may have been 
derived from aqueous deposition; that, infect, all this 
gold may have been deposited by marine action io the 
satne way as the materials of the aqueous rocks them- 
selves have been. Auh, moreover, our unaltered 
sedimentary rocks, even of tertiary age, may contain 
an equal amount of gold in pi-oportioa to their bulk 
with that of those altered or melainorphos-ed Cambrian 
and Silurian rocks, which have hitherto hern regarded 
as the earth’s great treasures cf the precious metal, 
'i'he knowledge now pos-sessed of secondary and ter- 
tiary auriferous veins in Ca'ifornia controverts the 
Plutonic as well as the palseozoio hypothesis, and the 
discovery of gold in sea-svater anl of its precipitation 
by organic matter alters the po.sition of the question 
from that it occupied in the days of Murchison and 
Forbes. Since silica may combine with gold under 
heated conditions, and the silicate of gold so formed 
be soluble in hot water, as is also silica, gold in the 
form of silicate could bo carried by wafer, heated by 
deep-seated conditions or by the neighbouring 
uprise of fused matter, from its original position, 
and be deposited in veins with silica itself when 
subseqnent segregration would separate the sili a 
of tlie silicate of gold and leave it as free gold 
mbedded in quartz as it is now foued. The discovery 
by Sonstadt of nearly a grain of gold to the ton of 
sea-water shows tt at the sea has always held in 
Boluticn an ample store to give to its sediments the 
amount of gold they are low found to contain, and 
Daintree’s discovery of the power of organic matter 
is precipitate gold from a solution of the terchloride 
explains the deposition of gold from sea-water, since 
on tlie sea-boltoms there has always been a large 
amount of organic matter. Though the gold so de- 
posited would be iu i. fiuitesimsl proportion to the 
mass of the marine mim ral sediments, it would be 
aggregated by uuc'ei of metiliic sulphides by which 
it would be retained until thermal conditions favoured 
ils couvei'sio.i to a soluble silica‘e. The sulphide of 
iron, or pyrites, is known to nearly always contain 
gold, and hence it is to be concluded that the gold 
of the sedimentary rooks which have not been sub- 
jee'ed to the favo-uting conditions for ils sepaiation 
and preserva'iou in quartz wins is now in the metallic 
sulpbides these rocks conta'n. In such rocks as the 
chalk and the Londen clay, the amcuut of pyrites 
is very great, and the author concluded by giving a 
rougii estima'o of wLat may be l he amount of the 
gold now iu the surface-rocks cf the south-east of 
England, from which it appears that these deposits 
may conlain gold to the value) of £100,000,000 sterling. 
The Ohaitman said that (he iircspect held cut by 
Mr. L-.bley was very enc urajing, and lie hoped that 
sjiiie oiiO would be able to suggest fcow to much 
wealth c(uld be rendered avai'abie. There was good 
ground for believing that gold deposits were gradu- 
ally growing, and therefore for the present this 
enormous amount of gold might be left until it had 
aggregated ioto convenient nuggets. (Laughter.) 
