270 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. {1 Ocr., 1902. 
“stick.” There is too much of the nature of investment about it, of raising capital 
and a guarantee fund to be spent in buying land and growing cotton, rather than in 
devoting its energies and influence to the promoting of the growth of cotton in all 
portions of the cotton belt by persuading and encouraging others to do the growing. 
Lhe £50,000 asked for, to be spread over five years, will not go very far in purchasing 
land and converting the same into cotton plantations. 1 can picture the company at 
the end of that time, or perhaps before, fixed up with afew small estates here and 
there, producing a few hundred bales and their funds exhausted. In that case it 
would probably drift from the original objects of the association and would become 
narrowed down to a purely commercial company whose energies and interests would 
gradually be centred in the success of its own investments. Talking with my cotton 
friends and experts, we would have preferred the scheme to have taken this shape : 
The formation of a powerful committee. to be called “the committee for promoting 
cotton-growing,”’ this committee to be thoroughly representative of ail the various 
sections of the Lancashire trade. Its business would be to put itself into friendly 
communication with all the consuls and official representatives of Great Britain 
wherever the climate was suitable for the growing of cotton, and inviting their 
sympathy and influence and aid. Where necessary, it would bring pressure to bear, 
either through the British Government or otherwise, to encourage the planting of a 
few acres for the growing of samples as a beginning. In regard to our own foreign 
possessions and colonies, it is possible that Government subsidies would be forth- 
coming. ‘This commistee would require no capital’ or guarantee fund, and would 
enter upon no land or commercial speculations, but would expect every firm in 
Lancashire of any position to become a subscriber, say, of £1 1s. per aunun. By 
this means a large annual income would be secured, an energetic secretary with one 
or two clerks could be engaged, and a short monthly report could be sent out to 
subscribers. Such report would be interesting as containing information, corres- 
pondence, and news from the different regions of the world, and as reporting the 
progress and work of the committee. Conducted on such lines, it does seem to some 
of us that such a committee would speedily place us, and keep us, in touch with a 
new cotton world.— Yours, &c., Ae 
JOHN HARPER. 
Alderley Edge, 16th June, 1902. 
GUTTA-PERCHA IN NEW GUINEA. 
Mr. Deakin, ~Acting Minister for External Affairs, has, through the 
British Ambassador at Berlin and the British Foreign Office, received an 
interesting report giving the results of an expedition under Herr Schelter, 
which has been exploring in German New Guinea. The expedition, when 
travelling from Shephausart to the Bismarck Mountains, made valuable 
disvoverics of gutta-percha and indiarubber. The Nutional Zeitung describes 
the discoveries as of the utmost importance to the future of New Guinea. Mr. 
Deakin explains that as the boundary between British and German New Guinea 
is purely artificial, the probabilities are that similar discoveries will be made in 
British territory. 
TESTING CANE JUICE. 
Mr. U. Bourguelot recommends as a test for the presence of cane sugar the 
use of the invertin of yeast, which doubles cane sugar. It has the same effect 
also on gentianose and raffinose, and these carbohydrates are rare in plants. 
By these means he has determined the presence of cane sugar in the rhizome 
of Scrophularia nodosa, in the succulent pericarp of Cocos yatai (25 em. per 
kilo), and in the horny endosperm of Asparagus officinalis (15 gm. per kilo). 
In neither of the two latter plants was the reaction with emulsion obtained 
showing the absence in these organs of a glucoside which is doubled by that 
ferment, Comptes Iendus. 
