nd
the age of the leaf at the time of picking. Young, tender leaves
have the finest flavor, and bring the highest prices, but shrink
enormously in curing, and many growers consider it more profitable
to leave them until they are well matured. It requires about
four pounds of fresh leaves to make one pound of dry leaves,
and black tea and green tea are grown from the same bush. If the
leaf is completely dried immediately after picking it retains
its green color, but if it is allowed to stand and sweat for
several hours a kind of fermentation takes place which turns it
black.

There are now about 236,000 acres of coffee orchards in India,
about 111,760 persons are employed upon them and the exports
will average 27,000,000 pounds a year. The coffee growers of
India complain that they cannot compete with Brazil and other
Spanish-American countries where overproduction has forced down
prices below the margin of profit, but the government is doing
as much as it can to encourage and sustain the industry, and
believes that they ought at least to grow enough to supply the
home market. But comparatively little coffee is used in India.
Nearly everybody drinks tea.

Three million acres of land is devoted to the cultivation of
sugar, both cane and beet. During the Cuban revolution the industry
secured quite an impetus, but since the restoration of peace and
the adjustment of affairs, prices have gone down considerably,
and the sugar of India finds itself in direct competition with
the bounty-paid product of Germany, France, Belgium, Austria
and other European countries. In order to protect its planters
the government has imposed countervailing duties against European
sugar, but there has been no perceptible effect from this policy
as yet.

The indigo trade has been very important, but is also in peril
because of the manufacture of chemical dyes in Germany and France.
Artificial indigo and other dyes can be produced in a laboratory
much cheaper than they can be grown in the fields, and, naturally,
people will buy the low-priced article, Twenty years ago India
had practically a monopoly of the indigo trade, and 2,000,000
acres of land were planted to that product, while the value of
the exports often reached $20,000,000. The area and the product
have been gradually decreasing, until, in 1902, only a little
more than 800,000 acres were planted and the exports were valued
at less than $7,000,000.

The quinine industry is also i