414 
THE MEDITERRANEAN NATOEAl.lST 
fact that thousands of acres of the sugar planta- 
tions, and thousands of acres of what had. for- 
merly been waste ground , of a character similar to 
the plateaux region of Malta, are now laid out for 
sisal growing. The total cost of production, and 
of placing the material on the London market is 
£12 per ton: the market price at present is £ 26 
per ton, so that there is a net profit of £ 14 per ton. 
The sisal will grow anywhere, no matter how 
how poor the soil may be: but the climate and 
soil of Malta are specially suited for it. 
Beyond planting and occasionally trimming, it 
requires no further attention; and at the end of 
the third year the harvest begins and continues, 
without intermission, for from seven to ten years. 
No preparation other than that of the most 
simple kind is necessary. 
When the long, sharp-pointed leaves are ripe 
they are picked and crushed; after which they 
dried in the sun, washed in salt water, and then 
shipped to England. 
The demand for sisal fibre at the present time 
is so great that £ 2 per ton more is offered for it 
chan is offered for Manilla Hemp. 
The Maltese might follow the example that 
has been set ! 
The climates of the two groups of islands are 
very similar; and the soils are almost identical in 
composition. And in addition to this the Maltese 
Islands have these Quarternary loams and brec- 
cias, to which I have just alluded, and which 
contain such stores of fertile, alluvial soil. 
Nor is this all. The Sisal plant has for some 
years past been grown in Malta for ornamental 
purposes ; and it has flourished, and multiplied. 
But no one seems to have guessed its true nature, 
or to have known anything of its great economic 
value. 
The project here proposed may, therefore, be 
cori udered as being now beyond the experimental 
stage: and it awaits only the necessary capital, 
energy, and enterprise to carry it out and make it 
pay. 
If these 54,000 tummoli were reclaimed as is 
here suggested their land value, at the average 
price, would represent a value of .^27, 000 per annum. 
If planted with Sisal, taking the produce per acre 
in the Bahamas as our basis of calculation, these 
54,000 tummoli would yield at 7 £ cwt. of fibre per 
tummolo, about 7,500 tons per annum and this at 
the market price £ 26 per ton is equivalent to 
about £ 200,000 annually. In other words each 
tummolo of ground would yield an annual income 
of £ 3. 15. 0. 
In the fore-going necessarily brief remarks I 
have endeavoured to point out the more salient 
features of what would, I have no doubt, be a 
successful and a profitable industry for these is- 
lands: and which would, by the utilization of the 
thousands of acres that are at the present time 
lying idle, help to provide for a large proportion of 
of the islands surplus population. 
It is but a bare outline, and it is obviously open 
to many developments; but it is practicable and 
would go far towards meeting the necessities of 
the case. 
John H. Cooke. 
Plant Extremes. 
A recent writer, Mr. G. C. Neally, remarks 
that the resources of Nature in the vegetable 
kingdon are strikingly displayed in the division 
Phanerogamia (flowering plants), where we see a 
marvellous variety in range, abundance, and cha- 
racteristics, but that it is in the Cryptogansia 
division (flowerless plants) that the greater ex- 
tremes are found. Considering temperature, we 
find that manjr of the Arctic lichens vegetate 
below freezing point. In the Algae class, the so- 
called red snow of Arctic regions grows in a like 
cold; and there are not only others that live in 
hot springs, but in the Island of Amsterdam a 
species of liverwort exists in mud said to be much 
hotter than boiling water. There are plants for 
every possible degree of light. Many of the 
mosses and lichens flourish on rocks and old 
timber fully exposed to the sun’s rays, and on 
the other hand, species of fungi have homes even 
in the darkest caverns and mines. Moisture seems 
essential to vegetable growth. Many plants are 
known which are always beneath the water’s sur- 
face, while some of the lichens are at home on 
desert rocks, though it is probable that some 
moisture must be received at some time by 
every plant. Great diversity in age is one of the 
striking characteristics of plants. Pouchet says 
that some of our common moulds pass in a single 
