"from
the real investment of capital in India, notwithstanding much loss, a
fair return to this country may be expected. Machinery makes a market
for portion of the surplus which will shortly be shewn (according to
general expectation) to the work we have pointed out. It remains for
the merchants and planters interested to say whether a public meeting
should be held with the view of urging Government to comply with the
request to ask for Mr. Brough Smyth's services to examine and report.
Possibly Mr. Dixon might be able to do all that is needful by way of
preliminary geological enquiry; but Mr. Smyth is so well-known in the
Gold-mining world from -his official position in Victoria, that his
report would have the highest possible authority one way or the other,
and would, we have little doubt, be well worth all the money spent on
it.
GOLD
IN SOUTHERN INDIA AND CEYLON: We had only passed our remarks of
yesterday to the printer when, by a rather noteworthy coincidence, we
received a communication from a gentleman now engaged in surveying
several of the Travancore plantations for quartz reefs. Some weeks ago
in noticing the latest Report of the Aberdeenshire Agricultural
Association we alluded to the valuable work done for farmers in the
North of Scotland by their Consulting Chemists, Mr. Thomas Jamieson and
Mr. J. MacDonald Cameron. We had no idea then that the letter gentleman
was in India advising our brethren across the water on the Travancore
hills as to the prospect of a gold-yielding reef being found in their
properties, and also on the, best means of improving their cultivation
where coffee and other products were likely to pay better than
gold-mining. Mr. MacDonald Cameron was commissioned in November last
by a syndicate of coffee planters to proceed to Travancore to survey
several of the estates for quartz reefs. This mission has been, in some
cases, attended with very great success, but to what extent
particularly, our informant is not permitted to say. But it has struck
Mr. Cameron while working in Travancore that the planters in some of
our Ceylon districts where old coffee is in rather a bad way might
think it worth their while to ascertain the mineral resources of their
estates, and, as he will be in Colombo early next month on his way
home, they would have a good opportunity of conferring with him on the
subject. As Mr. Cameron is certain to call at this office immediately
he arrives, we shall be glad to receive any communications intended
for him. He was Assistant for some time in the Royal School of Mines,
South Kensington.
Besides
reporting on the quartz reef, Mr. Cameron has taken advantage of his
visit to Travancore to impress upon the planters the desirability of
their establishing experimental stations to get the full benefit of
chemical science in aiding their industry, if they are to continue to
hope for the recovery of the capital invested in what, for the past few
years at least, has not been a very successful pursuit. This suggestion
is now under the consideration of the Committee of the Travancore
Planters' Association, and will be definitely settled next week. The
time has surely come for Ceylon, which has almost been foremost in
coffee cultivation, to adopt a similar course, and it may be a question
at this moment for the consideration of the Committee of our Planters'
Association whether three or four experimental stations should not be
established and worked in correspondence with those in Travancore under
the direction of the same chemist. Such a course would, at least, have
the advantage of lessening the cost. For a proof of the resulting
benefit, we need only point to the letter of Mr. Graham Anderson of
Mysore, who is really carrying on an experimental station for the
benefit of his brother planters in India and Ceylon. When Mr. Cameron
arrives we shall have to learn the minimum cost and other particalars
of the experimental stations he would recommend, because it is
possible that each of our larger districts, or even a divisional group
of proprietors, might wish to carry on an experimental piece of
cultivation under scientific
