138 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
than J per cent. In Penang, I understand, the disease is very 
prevalent, so as seriously to affect the crop. 
The measures taken to eradicate the disease, and 
their failure. — “ Three years ago, on first noticing this 
disease, and thinking it might owe its cause to the 
ordinary aphis which often attacks the trees, I ordered 
one in particular, about ten years old, to be limed by 
washing the branches and stem with lime-water. That 
failed. 
2nd. “ Thinking it might proceed from a stiff cold 
soil and defective nutriment I had the ground well dug 
all round the tree, a drain made to carry off any water 
that might have lodged round the roots, while I manured 
deeply and top-dressed with cow-dung and burnt earth ; 
but that failed. The leaves put on a most healthy deep- 
green hue, the fruit were abundant, but as they matured 
the disease showed itself as before.’' 
3rd. He scrubbed and washed the branches and 
stem with an infusion of Tuba-root mixed with sulphur 
and Bengal soap, but that had no effect. 
4th. He tried cutting the tree down close to the 
ground, but when the plant recovered and fruited the 
disease reappeared in full force, and finally he cut down 
the tree, dug out the roots, and planted another one, 
which was healthy. 
He notes that the disease is not contagious, as he 
has not noticed the trees adjacent to those affected to 
be in the slightest degree touched. 
CULTIVATION AREAS 
The home of the nutmeg and its earliest cultivation 
area lay in the Moluccas, as has been already stated in 
the history of the spice, and to this day a very large 
amount of nutmegs and mace is received from the 
Dutch islands. 
Warburg gives the following figures of bearing trees 
in the Dutch East Indies : — 
