Nov. 1, 1897.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
333 
fibre-yielding plants” and labour in some parts, 
is abundant and cheap. But we should be sorry 
to see anyone go in for “ Kaiuie” there on an 
expectation of more than £5 per acre return — and 
even tlien rbe i-i\ estment would be a venture as all 
pioneering actcnq.rs in the tropic.s invariably are. 
Since ■\vriling tiie above we have seen it stated 
that Mr. MacDonald has arranged with a natii e 
Sultan (Datu Mahonimed) to put 1,OOU aere.s 
under ramie and tliaC a cetitral factory is to be 
erected to treat the product aftei the MacDon- 
ald-Boyle process. Tliis undertaking and experi- 
ment will certainly be watclied witli tlie greatest 
possible i’ terest. Mr. MacDonald has a wide 
margin to work on, and we wish him all success. 
PLANTING NOTES. 
Planting and Piioduce in Trinidad. — The report of 
Sir Herbert Jerniugham of Trinidad shows that the 
imports amounted to £2,463.525 and the exports to 
£2,165,820, of which about half in each case belongs to 
the United Kingdom and the British colonies. Sugar 
and its products, cocoa, asphalte, and bitters are the 
chief exports. The total area of the colony is es- 
timated at 1,120,000 acres, of which nearly half a 
million acres have been alienated, the remainder 
being Crown lands. The area under sugar cane is 
58,500 acres, and cocoa 97,000 acres. The Tobago 
report, which is annexed to that from Trinidad, is 
also satisfactory. The revenue exceeded the expen- 
diture, and the island had a balance to its creait 
at the end of the year. The population of the is- 
land at the end of the year was estimated at 248,404, of 
which Bast Indians numbered 81,404. — U. and C. 
Mail, Sept. 3. 
E 1 .JI. — The last report from Fiji deals wdiolly 
with the trade of the islands for the past four 
years. The trade last year amounted to £677,834, 
of which, approximately, two-l birds were exports. 
Of the whole trade more than nine tenths was 
•with, or through, the Australasian colonies. New 
Zealand taking nearly half the whole and New 
South Wales the lion’s share of the remainder. 
More than four-fifths of the total trade of the 
group is carried on at the port of Suva and the 
remainder at Levuka. The chief imports are 
drapery, breadstulfs and biscuits, coals, hardware, 
meats, and a great variety of manufactured goods 
in small quantities, while the export trade shoivs 
an increasing tendency to concentrate a,round 
three main sLaple.s — sugar, fruit, and copra. When 
the fiofures for these are deducted from the whole 
it is seen that the export of minor products is 
diminishing. The value of the exiiorts last year 
was £435,342, of which sugar absorbed £336,929. 
The area under sugar is increasing, in .spite of 
the unsatisfactory condition of the market, for 
the sugar industry can only be profitably con- 
ducted on a large scale. The export of copra 
last year amounted to £48,950, which is very 
much below the average, and only half that of 
the previous yeir, while the fruit export — bananas 
and pineapples, wholly — was £18,490, also a great 
decline on previous yeiirs. But this decline is 
regarded as temporary only, especially as large 
areas are being put under fiuit cultivation in 
different parts of the islands. There is ,a very great 
nuiidier of minor products, the export in most 
cases being very trifling; the list of them “is 
more indicative of possibilities than of tneir ful- 
filment the export of them is “ of a more or 
less casual nature,” altlwugh there are indications 
that some, such as coffee and rice, may increase 
in the near future, as soon as they have supplied 
the considerable local market which exists. — 
London Times, Sept. 17. 
Fecundity of Plants.— Your Monday morn- 
ing “ Echoes of Science” made mention— says a 
correspondent— of the common Purslane (Portu- 
laca olemcea), a weed common in Ceylon and 
known among the natives, who use it as a vege- 
table for their curries, as Gendakola. The plant 
is put down as a “ botanical wonder” in that 
the average number of seeds in each see>lpod 
was found to be 6,000. From the following 
(taken from Khind’s Vegetable Kingdom) it will 
be seen that there are other plants, which, for 
fecundity, beat the common Purslane: — “The 
fecundity of plants, in other words, tlie aston- 
ishing number of germs or seeds which they pro- 
duce, is one of the causes which are most [lower- 
ful in facilitating their reproduction, and in 
affecting tlieir surprising mutipiication, A single 
capsule of the white poppy has been known to 
contain 8,000 seeds, and a capsule of the Vanilla 
from 1,000 to 1,500 : a single stalk of Zea Mays, 
Indian corn or maize, will )»roduce 2,000 seeds • 
a single plant of tobacco has been found by 
calculation to possess the almost incredible num- 
ber of 360,000, and a single stalk of spleen 
wort has been thought, by estimation, to produce 
at least a million of seeds.” 
1.8 Coffee “King?”- In an article under this 
heading The Planter says :— Coorg, doubtless, has 
for inany years past held the premier position in 
the industry in Southern India, but there is no 
denying the fact that even there it is now slowly 
declining. Leaf disease, borer, and bad season’s 
are, of course, responsible for this falling oft’. 
What coffee planters ought to set about is 
to try and improve the .soil which has had 
all the sustenance it once contained taken out 
of it by years of continuous planting. It is 
better to go on opening up fresh land than to 
persist in planting and replanting that which 
has borne fruit a thousand fold more than there 
was any reasonable right to expect, and then to 
do it at a loss from year to year. While on 
this subject it may be useful to glance at the 
Coorg coffee prospects for the current season. 
According to an official forecast which has just 
been published, the Coorg coft'ee crop of 1897-98 
is as follows: Estimated yield at IJ cwt., Euro- 
peans 1 984 tons; estimated yield at H cwt. per 
acre. Natives 7.30 tons; total 2,714 tons. The 
average crop during the last ten years has been 
3,409 tons; thus the forecast represents only a 
thirteen-anna crop. Viewed in the light of these 
figures we feel justified in repeating the question 
which heads the pre.sent article. 
Yerba Mate, oh Paraguayan Tea? — In his las^ 
report to !be Foreign Office Her Majesty’s Consul 
at Villa Asuncion has something to say about Para- 
guayan tea. He says: “ There are two classes sold, 
but it is only in the manner of preparation that 
they differ. The kind know'n as ‘ Mborovire’ is 
merely dried over a furnace, and then beaten into 
small pieces with sticks. The ‘ Molda’ goes throuo-h 
the same process, but is afterwards ground in” a 
mill. The export duty on the former was increased 
in 1895 from 30c paper to 10c gold, and on the latter 
from 25o paper to 9o gold per 10 kilos. The revenue 
derived from this source in 1895 amounted to 
471,G68dols (£16,845). The Yerba ic.rests, cdled yer- 
brles, were formerly the property of the States, 'but 
most of them have been sold, and are now in tiie 
hands of a few capitalists and companies. The In- 
dustrial Paraguaya Uompany, which owns about half 
of the yerbales kiiowuto exist in the couiitry, exports 
annually about 400,000 ar. obas (4,512 ,ous). 'The total 
quantity of yerba exported during the past year is 
estimated at about 9,024 tons, and the average price 
per arroba (25) was lldols 50c paper (7s 8d).” 
