188 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
the good buds while stalking. It can be done at this time 
with little trouble, and with no extra cost, but the invariable 
custom is to let good and bad all go in together. Before finally 
sending to market we passed the cloves through a riddle, to 
remove the small immature buds. By these means, which is 
only the old story of attention to detail, we produced what, for 
Zanzibar, was a fairly good sample, though falling short in the 
size of the buds. This was a defect which we could not remedy ; 
most of the cloves this year have been small. 
Practically no difference is made in the local market 
between good and ordinary, so I was induced to send a small 
trial lot of 140 fraslas to be sold separately in London, to test 
the value of our work. Early in the year I had sent home to 
Messrs. Gray, Daws, and Co. an experimental sample of cloves 
that had been dried last season, and Mr. Hugh Garden of that 
firm reported on them as follows : — 
“ As regards the cloves this is, of course, the finest sample 
of Zanzibar ever shown, and buyers who saw it valued it at 
7d. to 8d. There is still a considerable difference between this 
and Penang, which somehow appear to retain their reddish 
brown colour. A very fine sample was bought in at auction 
at lid. or 114d., and was being held for Is. The market 
apparently makes the same difference between Penang and 
your sample — in value — as between your sample and ordinary 
fair Zanzibar, but this, too, you must understand, is only for 
very limited quantities.” 
These cloves were dried under glass after having been 
specially picked. More depends upon the picking than upon 
the drying. It is impossible for us here to pick the buds 
singly, because of the quantity to handle ; they must be picked 
in bunches, as they grow, and the small and over-ripe buds 
sorted out afterw’ards. In order to test the efficacy of glass 
we erected a small house 30 ft. long and 14 ft. wide, with 
galvanised iron walls and a glass roof. The heat of the sun 
was in this way increased 25° beyond what it was in the open 
air. This increase of temperature did not hasten the drying 
process so much as we expected, unless the cloves were first 
raised upon shelves. The heated air was then able to act from 
below and above, and cloves could be dried in two days in 
cloudy weather with only short intervals of sunshine. All 
our cloves were finished off in the glass-house. I don’t think 
that the elevated temperature to which they were exposed 
contributed so much to the improvement in quality as the 
sorting and riddling. We shall try and arrange next year a 
system of shelves to increase the drying area of the clove house. 
