7i6 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 
[April i, 1891, 
by them, share in the valuable deposits to which he 
refers. For our own part, we consider there ought 
to be abundant encouragement to induce capitalists 
to send out Mr. Barrington Brown himself with 
adequate staff and machinery in order to direct the 
needful development of a gemming industry on the 
lands already purchased or teased. 
» 
COCONUTS AND CINNAMON. 
Kadirana, March I2th. 
After three weeks of dry weather there was a 
good shower on the 7th and a few drizzles each 
evening since, aggregating 0-96 of an inch. This 
will help the peeling a little which is just now not 
good, owing perhaps to a bud now appearing. Cin- 
namon crops in this district will be much below 
the estimates on alt estates. Coconut pickings are 
good and will probably continue so till the end 
of June, but from then to the end of the year they 
will be very small. Prices are good (R35 to E37'25 
per 1,000 on the spot) and should continue so should 
the price of oil not fall much. Fever is prevalent 
in the villages. 
March 13th. 
Fine rain last night ; measured this morning 
0'69 in. 
^ — 
INCREASING THE SUPPLY OP FISH FOR 
FOOD. 
The ever-increasing work of the fish commissions, 
state and national, gives ever-increasing cause 
for public gratitude. This would no doubt be more 
generally forthcoming were it not for the prevalence 
of the erroneous notion that the pleasure of 
sportsmen is the chief object in view. On the 
contrary, though the angler has his grounds lor 
satisfaction, he is but a secondary consideration 
in this matter. The main purpose of fish culture 
is to increase the supply from this economical 
source of nutriment. As Professor Atwater puts it, 
“ Fish gather materials that would otherwise be 
inaccessible and lost and store them in the very 
forms that are most deficient in the produce of 
the soil. ” The chief nutrient of fish is protein, 
in which most vegetables, such as wheat, rye, 
maize, rice, potatoes, etc., are deficient. It is 
needless, however, to dilate on the physiological 
advantages of a protein supply when everybody 
knows the utility and economy of fish as an article 
of diet. * # * 
Just as trout streams through all the settled 
parts of the country have been fished out, so the 
great lakes and the adjacent parts of the ocean have 
been fished out. The aim of the fish commissions 
is to renew the supply. 
This suggests the most profitable feature of fish 
culture— the fact that fish is the only crop that 
doesn’t have to be cultivated. To plant and to 
harvest is all the work. The farms of fresh-water 
fish, that is to say, the rivers and streams, may 
be spoiled for them by the offscourings of manu- 
facturing, but that can never happen in the great 
lakes and the ocean. There is still room and food 
for as many of tliem as there were when John 
Smith could hardly get his ship along for the cod 
lliat belabored its sides. But within the memory of 
living men the supply of food fish has diminished so 
much as to become a reason for serious alarm. 
The work of the state commissions (and most 
of the states now have them) has been mainly 
directed to the stocking of rivers and ponds, to 
the erection of fishways around falls and dams, 
and to the procuring of legislation forbidding the 
taking of fish during the spawning season. The 
work in New York, which is at least not the 
most backward in this respect, will serve to illustrate 
what is going on through all the country. In 
the year ending September 30, 1890, the New York 
commission distributed fry and eggs as follows ; 
Brook trout, 2,699,500 ; lake trout, 7,476,000 ; 
brown trout, 1,246, .500 ; frost fish, 3,320,000 ; sea 
salmon, 50,000; land-locked salmon, 18,000 ; white 
fish, 3,998,000; ciscoes, 2,400,000 ; smelts, 200,000 ; 
maskinonge, 75,000; California trout, 155,000; 
pike, 4,000,000 ; shad, 12,238.688 ; grand total, 
39,844,688. As one instance of hundreds that might 
be cited from various parts of the country showing 
results already accomplished, it may be mentioned 
that last summer, when the fishway was put in 
at the Mechantville dam on the Hudson, in the 
shoal water created by opening the gates more 
than 100 salmon were counted, from one to three 
feet long, and probably weighing from five to 
thirty pounds. The largest salmon caught there 
by angling last season weighed twenty-two pounds, 
and measured thirty and one-half inches. These 
fish came from fry put into the Hudson seven 
years ago from the United States hatchery at 
Gold Spring, L. I. si< * * 
The United States commission finds its more 
important field in the great lakes and the ocean. 
At Put-in-Bay, Ohio, for example, the hatchery 
recently completed has a capacity of 350,000,000 
white-fish eggs, and it is intended to run it to its 
full capacity. All the eggs are procured from the 
pound nets in Lake Erie, and taken from the fish 
that are on their way to market, and would be 
wasted were it not for the commission. At Wood’s 
Holl, Mass., the most important station of the 
commission, the work that bids fair to be most 
profitable is the propagation of codfish, and the 
officials have strong hope of making cod again as 
plenty in New England waters as they were three 
centuries ago. This hope is based on the fact that 
in artifical propagation there is practically no loss, 
while the loss under nature’s care, or rather, lack 
of care, is tremendous. In the natural process 
only a small part of the eggs become fertilized, 
and so many of the infant cod get devoured that 
probably only 1,000 or 2,000 out of 1,000,000 
survive. The female cod averages 1,000,000 eggs, 
of which probably 950,000 can be saved in the 
hatchery. If the commission can furnish to the 
water as many fish from one cod as nature can 
from 10,000 or 100,000. it will not take many years 
to make a big impression on the cod supply. It 
is the same with the lobster, and with other 
products of the fisheries. Indeed, there is ground 
for expectation that ultimately fish may become our 
greatest and cheapest source of tooi.—Bradstreet’s, 
Quinine at its Lowest? — Where is the fall 
in price of Cinchona Bark and Quinine to 
stop ? From the monthly report of Messrs. 0. M. 
A C. Woodhouse, dated February 19th, by this 
mail we learn that 
Very few transactions were reported in Quinine, 
which was quoted nominally at about Is per oz. for 
German during the first 10 days of this month, how- 
ever, some forced sales drove the price down to lOd 
per oz. {the lowest price on record)', this decline attracted 
buyers, and a large business was done, chiefly at lO^d 
to lid ; latterly, again the tone has become quiet, and 
there are sellers at lid. As will be seen below, the 
shipments of Bark from Java during December were 
very heavy, being estimated at about 1,250,000 lb. 
Quinine at lOd and lid per ounce 1 and yet we 
venture to say, the great majority of retail buyers, 
in the country districts of the United Kingdom at 
least, continue to pay Id per grain or at the rate of 
40s per ounce I 
