3^0 
THE TROPICAL AGRtCULTU RtST. 
[Dec. I, i 897 i 
no more money into it. Mr. Stephens also thonght 
that the restrictions placed on the employment of 
Fijians excessive for the minimum pay tixsn by lav/ is 
put at 8d. a task or day or a lump sum of £5 per annum 
which is absurd, as a man may do no work for it ; while 
the cost of introducing the labourers on to the estate 
amounted to over £3 each, £1 5s. tf which goes to the 
Government as commutation taxes and stamp fee ; 
gener^illy 10s. per head beingalso paid to return the men 
to their homes, while in addition to all this the planter 
has to feed, supply soap, tobacco, hospital medicines 
and housing to the labourer. The aggregate cost under 
these conditions amounted to from Is. 3d. to Is. 6d. 
per day per man according to the system and food 
supply at the command of the manager ; about double 
the cost of the labour employed at similar work 
in India and Ceylon 1 Under these circumstances 
Mr. Stephens went back to Ceylon and is opening 
a tea plantation half of which he owns himself. 
Of the Wainunu Estates, Masusu had a very che- 
quered career from the start in 1884 through the 
vagaries of Mr. Barratt’s partner. Up to 1894, Mr. 
Barratt being mainly a working partner, at this time 
was left with this and Mr. Simpson’s Na Dua 
Estates on his hands, and with better machinery 
just to hand he hoped even with Fijian labour and 
their high cost to make the industry pay. Na Dua 
Estate of 80 acres had just been planted by the 
late Mr. G. H. Simpson and with the tea planted on 
Masusu (Mr. Barratt’s original work) of 100 acres 
a surplus would be left for export after two years’ 
operations. Excellent tea has been turned out and 
the high grades sell well in Fiji. The Pekoe and 
broken Pekoe are equal to the Ceylon teas the writer 
has tasted in Melbourne. 
On the 18th ultimo, in company with hon. J. M. 
Borron, the writer paid a visit to these Estates and Mr. 
Barratt gave us full particulars of his experience at 
Wainunu. As Mr. Barratt had anticipated in 1895 
and 1896 he had a surplus of several thousand pounds 
of tea, and for 1896 and 1897 he had a larger surplus 
mainly of low grade teas. A quantity of the first 
surplus was sent to the colonies and sold in competi- 
tion with Indian and Ceylon the average price was 
about the same as that of ordinary Eastern teas 
which left no margin for the higher cost of pro- 
duction here on account of labour. On all other 
points the advantage of land, driving power of 
machinery (by a Pelton wheel), transport (by 
water), and timber for packing, are in favour of 
Fiji. Again the consumpdon of tea in Fiji is from 
forty to fifty thousand pounds of tea per annum, 
but only about half this quantity is used of Wainunu 
tea for the reason, given by Mr. Barratt, that on 
account of the low grade teas being admitted at the 
same rate of duty as the better kinds, the very in- 
ferior kinds are sent here from the colonies 
as trade stock. As to the best class of tea he is 
satisfied that he could hold his own under present 
conditions in the Fiji market. Mr. Barratt told 
us that he and his partner had had enough of 
Fijian labourers at present cost of them and unless 
liberal concessions were made quickly by the Gov- 
ernment they would be compelled to close the place. 
Mr. Barratt, in reply to a question of Mr. Borron 
as to the suitability of coolies for the tea industry 
said, that if they had a larger capital to obtain a 
special class of labour mainly' composed of women, 
their husbands and children, with a large percentage 
of the latter for picking tea, so that they might bring 
their area up to about 400 to 500 acres it would pay 
over 15 per cent interest on capital. 
There is an abundance of land at Wainunu, thou- 
sands of acres unoccupied by natives heavily tim- 
bered and watered, with a luxurious vegetation 
different to any other f art of P’iji and as fine as any 
in the World. The Estates under discussion have 
over 400 acres and plenty of adjoining land which 
they could attach at a low cost. Any altitude may 
be got and all sorts of tea manufactured. Large 
cutters come up the river to within a few yards of 
the factory and load for Levuka and Suva. The 
factory has two tea rollers, green sorter cutter, 
sorter and graders of the latest patterns, a large 
first-class sirocco, and splendid fittings recently 
erected (for labour saving purposes) to work the 
green leaf. The quarters for manager, overseers and 
labourers are excellent, and much taste has been 
displayed in arranging the homestead and grounds. 
A stream of water has been tapped in the hills 
and brought down in iron pipes to drive a 
powerful Peltoir wheel capable of developing 
eight horse-power which drives all , and could drive 
more, machinery. 
The closing of this, the last of the tea estates 
aiming for an export trade, would be a very serious 
calamity and might extinguish all means of adver- 
tising or bringing under notice a product which 
would utilize large areas of land fit for no other 
purpose and employing labour unsuited to sugar cane 
cultivation. W. J. Ewins, 
— Fiji Times, Sept. 11. 
ANOTHER PLANT FOR FIBRE : 
“ CALOTROPIS GIGANTEA ’’—THE “ WARA ” 
OF THE SINHALESE. 
It turns out that the mis.sion of Mr. Mac- 
Donald to Bombay and Sindh h-as to do with 
testing the fibre-yielding luoperty of Calotropis 
procera, a well-known plant growing wild over 
Sindh and the Punjab. In this connection, a 
corre.spondent of the Indian Forester for September 
(see below) pleads for the testing as well of the fibre 
of Ccdotropis (jigantea, a common plant in Southern 
India and Ceylon. We shall therefore be much 
interested in the result of Mr. MacDonald's 
mission ; for, the latter plant— the “ Wara ” of 
the Sinhalese and also well-known to the Tamils 
under three different name.®, see below — is a very 
common plant in our lowcountry as the follow- 
ing account from Dr. Trinien’s “ Flora Zeylanica,” 
shows : — 
C. gigantea, Br. in Ait. Ilort. Keio., ed. 2, ii. 78 (1811). 
Wara Singhalese ; Mauakkovi, Errukalai, Urkkovi. 
Tamil. 
An erect shrub or small tree, reaching 10 ft., bark 
yellowish-white, furrowed, branches stout, cylindrical, 
more or less covered with a very fine, adpressed, 
cottony pubescence. 
Waste ground and roadsides, <fec., in the lowcountry ; 
very common, and often gregarious, FI. all the 
year ; pale violet or nearly white within, greenish- 
white outside, column pale blue. 
Throughout India, Malaya, S. China. 
Has a slightly fetid odour when bruised. The 
whole plantis veryfullof milky juice, which is given 
as a remedy for leprosy. The bark of the root 
(which is an official drug in the Indian Pharmacopceia) 
is employed as an alterative tonic. A very good 
fine fibre is obtained from the stem and used for 
fishing lines. The long hairs on the seed form a 
beautiful silk-cotton, used for stuffing. Charcoal for 
gunpowder is made from the stems at Jaffna. 
CALOTROPIS PROCERA AND GIGANTEA. 
You will probably be interested to hear that a 
representative of a firm (Messrs. Boyle and Company 
London) is on his way to Bombay for the purpose 
of undertaking experiments in extracting fibre from 
the Calotropis procera, a plant, the fibre of which 
has been known to be of excellent quality for the 
past twenty years or more. 
A small consignment of the fibre was sent to 
Messrs. Boyle and Company to be reported on, who 
then asked that some of the stems of the plant 
might be forwarded to them to ascertain whether 
the machinery they possessed could treat and de- 
corticate the fibre from the stems. There was no 
use of course in doing this as by the time the stems 
reached England, they would, it was known, be too 
dry, for the purpose of experiment. On being in- 
