May Beat Quinine

Monopoly Achievement in New Guinea

THE Australian newspapers, in June, got hold of a story to the effect that, despite the efforts of interests in the Netherlands Indies to keep the quinine industry as a Dutch monopoly. New Guinea had succeeded in breaking through the monopoly, and was now on the way to establishing a quinine industry there.

There were some doubts as to whether this was a correct presentation of the case.

Finally, a reporter discovered Mr. Q.

H. Murray, Director of Agriculture in New Guinea, who has been making a some what slow recovery from an illness, in Wootton Private Hospital, in Darling hurst, Sydney, and got the facts from him.

Mr. Murray said that, four years ago, he obtained a quarter of an ounce of seed from a former German agricultural research station in German East Africa, and from this small quantity of seed, at the experimental station established on the Ramu tableland, on the mainland of New Guinea, he had succeeded in raising 4.000 cinchona trees.

The trees which have been established in New Guinea are of the Red Cinchona variety. This variety yields four times as much quinine from its bark as ordinary cinchona, and this has enabled the Dutch to capture 95 per cent, of the world’s quinine market. The Dutch, for years, have taken extraordinary precautions to prevent the seeds of the Red Cinchona from being taken out of Java, and the world, as a result, has paid “through the nose” for quinine.

Mr. Murray’s success in establishing the Red Cinchona in New Guinea is a rather remarkable feat In tropical agriculture.