54 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
(July i, 1 S 97 . 
and exhibits from all parts of the world can be 
shown, and manufacturers in Great Britain are to 
be invited to send goods, the Government under- 
taking to admit free for six months all exhibits. 
Should any of our readers desire to be represented 
they should communicate at once with Mr. K. B. 
Cr'owe, Consul-General for Peru, 13, King Street, 
Liverpool. 
The Planting Industhies of Mexico. — At a recent 
meeting of the Mexican shareholders of the Mexican 
Coffee Trading and Planting Company it was men- 
tioned that there are already 1,. 500, 000 coffee plants 
in the company’s nurseries, which wid be ready for 
transplanting this year ; 60,000 one year and a half 
old trees have been planted, and are in good cono 
ditiou. The American Consul at the City of Mexiod 
says, “ That, striking as are the facts with regar- 
to the increase of the cultivation of coffee and the 
growth in the United States of a great appreciation 
of the Mexican berry and its sterling qualities, these 
can be paralleled in many points by the development 
of Mexican tobacco.” Although Prance has not 
in'ofited commercially by this increase, it is 
only simple justice to say that it i.i due very 
largely to Frenchmen and to the exiles from 
Cuba whom tliey employed. “In a word,” says 
Consul Crittenden, “Mexico is not only one of the 
coming coffee countries, but is also a comingtobacco 
country. Mexico seems to be destined to wear the 
mantle of Habana in tobacco production, and once 
secured it is safe to predict that it will never pass 
away, lor the soil of the tobacco region is so deep 
as to be practically inexhaustible, being from 8 ft. to 
20 ft. in depth, and in some places even 30 ft. 
Moreover, its extent is probably one hundred times 
that of the Cuban tobacco region, when we take into 
consideration the fact that acre for acre the percentage 
of cultivated land at the present moment capable of 
producing tobacco of the very highest grade is greater 
in Mexico than it ever was in Cuba in its best days. 
We can from this easily see what will be the amount 
produced in the future. Mexico’s resources in this 
direction are practically so great as to make it certain 
that it will become rich from its tobacco alone. No 
doubt the result will be finally to cheapen the 
Habana cigars, and put them within the reach of 
all.” — II. & C. Mail, May 7. 
MANURIAL EXPERIMENT WITH SWEET 
POTATOES. 
As a specimen ot the work done in Antigua by 
Messrs. E. Watts, Government Chemist and Mr. 
F. R. Shephard of the Schools, we quote tlie 
following in full with appended table : — 
Seeing that the ash of the Sweet Potato is very 
rich in Potash and also contains a very fair proportion 
of Phosphoric acid, experiments were made in order 
to ascertain whether the application of these two 
constituents would materially increase the yield. 
Nitrogeon was not used, as in an adjoining field a 
cron of sweet potatoes had developed such a large 
amount of leaf and vine, — due as we suspected to an 
abundance of Nitrogeon — that there was some diffi- 
culty in securing a crop of tubers. 
Four experiments were tried, the plots receiving 
Sulphate of Potash 
Superphosphate 
Sulphate of Potash and Superphosphate 
No Manure. 
and each of these was repeated four times : the indi- 
vidual plots measured 100 ft. by 40 ft. 
The variety planted was that known as the “Quil- 
dane,” it was planted early in January 1896 and reaped 
in June and .July. The manures were applied in Janu- 
ary. The large potatoes sold at the rate of 3/ per 
100 lbs. and the small ones at 9d per 100 lbs. 
realizing £13-6-0 per acre. 
The weights of potatoes and the proportion of 
large tubers are given in Table XI from which it 
ruuju tnai potasu and phosphate, separately 
or combined, do not increase the yield of tubers in 
these soils. 
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AGRICULTURAL-SCIENTIFIC EXPERI- 
MENTS IN ANTIGUA 
(TLxtracts from Heport to the Colonial Secretarij.) 
Government Laboratory, Antigua, Dec. 3rd, 1896. 
These experiments are a continuation of those 
which have been carried on systematically since 
1892, and consist in the application of known quanti- 
ties of the commonly employed constituents of com- 
mercial manures, to small plots of canes ; the 
experiments being conducted on both “plant” and 
“ ratoon” canes. 
The experiments with plant and ratoon canes may be 
classified as follows ; — 
( 1 ) Experiments with Nitrogen, in which un- 
manured plots and plots receiving no nitrogen are 
compared with plots receiving varying amounts of 
Nitrogen in the form ot {a) Sulphate of Ammonia, (h) 
Nitrate of Soda, (c) Dried Blood. 
( 2 ) Experiments with Phosphatic manures, in which 
the yields obtained from plots receiving ( 1 ) no manure 
and ( 2 ) no phosphates are compared with those from 
plots receiving varying amounts of phospatesin several 
diflereiit forms 
(a) as Superphosphate 
(b) as finely ground Mineral Phosphate 
(c) as “ Double Superphosphate ” 
(d) as Basic Phosphate 
