THE tROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [May j, 189S: 
epidermis. When peeled, the roots are thrown 
into water and washed ; the purer the water the 
whiter is tlie product. .Sometimes limejuice is 
Used in the w.ash-water, which gives a whiter root, 
but as the lime-juice contains saccharine matter 
and peetose, it prevents drying, and mildew follows. 
After washing, the rhizomes are dried in the sun, 
and in from six to eight days they become 
thoroughly dry. At sunrise the ginger is put 
out upon a barbecue (i)latform of stone or concrete), 
turned over at mid- day, and taken in at sun- 
set. The average loss of weiglit by drying is 
ne.arly 70 per cent. Experiments have been made 
with calcium clilonde as a drying-agent, but 
the result was not equal to the native metliod, 
and the same may also be said of American 
fruit-evaporators, in uhich wood is used as the 
source of heat. Tt has been asserted that it is a 
common practice to bleach ginger with the 
fumes of chlorine or sulphurous .acid, hut Mr, 
Kilmer states that no instance of it is known in 
Jamaica, as the planters .are unintelligent, and 
are opposed through prejudice to innovations. 
Mr. Kilmei tried chlorine gas as a bleaching- 
agent, but the product was of a dirty yellow colour. 
When the crop is fully dried it is carried, 
mostly by women, to the place of sale, which 
may be from live to fourty miles distant. Here 
it is sold by the “heap," not by measure or 
weight. A“heep" of ginger varies considerably, 
according to the law of supply and demand. If 
the “hands” are finely shaped and large, there 
are fewer in the heap ; if small, dark, and snarly, 
the pile is made larger. Should the price of ginger 
in London or New York advance it is because 
the heaps in Jamica have been diminished, and 
should the price go down the heaps have be- 
come larger. The exporters of ginger assort the 
produce into four or five grades, the highest 
being tiie large-sized hands of light and uniform 
colour, the lowest being the ratoon finger sorts, 
which are small, soft, and lacking flavour. Some 
of the hands weigh as much as 8 oz. The amount 
of ginger exported from the isl.and during the 
last ten years was as follows 
lbs. 
lbs. 
1887 . . . . 
1,121,827 
1892 . . 
.. 1,822,531 
1888 .. .. 
1,141,877 
1893 .. 
1889 .. .. 
1,002,653 
1894 . . 
.. 1,672,384 
1890 J year 
.554,193 
1895 .. 
.. 1,736,460 
1891 .. .. 
1,219,197 
1896 . . 
. . 1,960,009 
Half of this goes to the United States. An average 
crop may be estimated at from 1,000 to 1,500 
lbs. dried ginger per acre, and in some cases 
2,000 lbs. As already mentioned, the Jamaica 
Agricultui-al Society is improving the methods 
o£ cultivation by fer tilisation, and frour information 
recently to hand it is predicted that the crop now 
about to be gathered will probably be .a record 
one, partly due to an abundant rainfall. This 
will nrean lower prices for the ginger-planter. — 
The Chemist and Dni^rjist. 
BEANS; A FEW PRACTICAL SUGGES- 
TIONS FOR THEIR CULTIVATION 
AND UTILISATION. 
The very mention of the word “Beans makes the 
mouths of sea-fairing men (yankees in particular) 
water as they think of the delicious pork nestling 
in Its steaming bed of ‘ bak'-d beans,’ a delicacy 
seldom dreamed of by shore-folk on the east of 
the huge Atlantic, 
To the medical mind the word is associated with 
the recollection of several drugs, such as Calabar 
bean, St Ignatius bean, Malacca and Carthagena 
beans, and a number of other vegetables whose only 
resemblance to the true bean or faha was either the 
shape of the seed or the fact of the seed having 
been enclosed in a seed-pod and to which the af&x 
faha (meaning to feed) had been erroneously fitted. 
An attempt has also been made by some authori- 
ties to include Soja Hispida, Cajanus, Dholls, the 
fiat varieties of peas and many of the lentil family 
under the generic name of beans ; simply because 
they, like beaus, have been called and dietetically 
spoken >.f as ‘pulses’ and pulses embrace an en- 
ormous group of farinaceous seeds such as peas, 
lentils, maize, dholls, beans etc., all of which con- 
tain a large proportion of nitrogenous matter for 
avail by the animal creation. 
But suoh a classification is erroneous in the ex- 
treme ; as these several plants iiiaterialli/ differ not 
only in their constitution, life-history, and botannical 
standing, but also in the chemical composition of 
their seeds, as may be seen by the subjoined table 
which shows the percentage of the various consti- 
tuents of the flour obtained by pulverising the ma- 
ture dry seeds. 
tr 
o » 
, 
Kind ot Pulse. 
§ s 
5 ; « 
St.arch 
matter 
Fat. 
2 
S 2 
15 ri 
S 
r, 
Kidney bean 
26. 9 
49. 9 
2. 0 
4.946 
16. 0 
French bean 
27. 3 
48.84 
2. 0 
5 212 
13. 5 
Broad bean 
27.00 
52. 6 
1. 6 
5. 08 
12. 8 
Soja Hispida 
38.83 
26.65 
1.51 
4. 14 
10.25 
Dolichos 
23 27 
59.38 
2.20 
3. 19 
12.03 
Musoor Dholl 
25.15 
59.85 
1.26 
1. 92 
il.84 
Lentils 
25. 2 
58. 4 
2. 6 
2. 3 
11. 5 
Pisum Satiuum 
27.96 
56.36 
1.47 
2. 48 
11.79 
Cajanus Indica 
22.18 
62.13 
1.95 
3. 11 
iO.63 
One of the most prolific of the vegetable world 
and almost the most useful as a food stuff, but yet 
the most neglected in India, is the Bean of which 
there are more than four hundred varieties, all of 
which however belong to the natural order Leguminoset 
of the class Diadelghia and the order Dccan- 
dria. 
USES 
The leaves, legumes and seeds are freely used as deli- 
cacies in company with meat or rice, in the shape of 
boiled vegetables, greens and curries; but the < ried 
seeds are not largely indulged in as human food nor 
do the Indians live on them exclusively for the 
simple season that the crops sown are not very exten- 
sive and the supply of the nearly matured or young 
beaus is in no way equal to the market demand for 
them. 
As a cattle food, the Dolichos Ghotwal is the only 
one of the bean tribes that is popul-ir ; but even 
then this popularity does not extend beyond the 
Madras Presidency and the Mysore, Coorg and Carn- 
atic Districts ; because of the caste prejudices of 
the people who adhere to whatever their forefathers 
did in the way of stock-raising and foddering cattle. 
The flowers contain considerable amounts of sac- 
charine and starchy matter which mitht be turned 
to advantage for the production of a'cohol or ensil- 
age ; but they are allowed to go waste in most places. 
The Todas, however, a semi wild tribe occupying 
some of the forest-lands in the Nilgherris collect 
the flowers of the wild varieties, mix them with 
various herbs and berries, add sugar and water, and 
from this mixture, prepare a kind of mild arrack 
by fermentation 
The leaves and stems which are rich in soluble 
salts make excellent fodder for cattle and might be 
stored up as such; but with the usual wastefulness 
