39S 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[December i, 1883. 



AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS IN INDIA AND 

 CEYLON. 

 Mr. Buck, who was Commissioner for India at the 

 Melbourne International Exhibition, and wlio is now 

 Secretary to the Government of India in the Revenue 

 t!nd Agricultural Depiirtmeut, seems determined that 

 a body of really reliable agricultural statistics for 

 the Indian Emijire shall be obtained, and, at his 

 instance, a Conference of officers representing the 

 various local Governments is to be held in Calcutta 

 for the settlement of important subjects connected 

 with the end in view, a programme of which will 

 be prepared in Mr. Buck's office. Mr. Buck, with 

 rai'e consideration, has fixed the third week in Decern, 

 ber for the meeting, with the belief that the meet, 

 ings of the Conference can be concluded in a week 

 The officers deputed from Madras, Bombay, the. 

 North-west Provinces, the Punjaub, the Central Pro- 

 vinces, Burma, &c. , would thus have the opportunity 

 of spending their Christmas holidays in e-xamining 

 the various objects at the Exhibition M'hich will be 

 then open, with pleasure and profit to themselves 

 and with ultimate advantage to the Ciovernments 

 they will represent. From Madras, Mr. Wilson, the 

 Director of Revenue Settlement and Agi-iculture, ig 

 to be deputed, and it has struck us that it might 

 be well if the Ceylon Government asked that of 

 India to allow an officer from this colony to attend 

 the proposed Conference for the purpose of making 

 himself acquainted -Hith and reporting on the system 

 proposed for adoption in India, whereby reliable 

 statistics of agriculture are to lie collected, classified 

 and published. We should have named the Auditor- 

 Generivl as the fitting deputy from Ceylon, but for 

 the fact that a member of the Executive cannot be 

 spared so soon after the arrival of a new Governor 

 and during the bringing forward of the estim- 

 ates of revenue and expenditure in Sir Arthur Gordon's 

 first Session of the Legislative Council. Under these 

 circumstances, if the idea were entertained, tiie choice 

 might fall on a member (the senior) of the CJrain 

 Tax Commission. By the time that Commission has 

 coimpleted its labours, we suppose a nearer approxim- 

 at on than at present will be possible, as regards 

 the acreage of land in cultivation under the various 

 grain crops and the yields per acre of lands cultiv- 

 ated each year, distinguishing cases where two crops 

 per annum are reaped from those where there is 

 only one sowing season and one harvest. But agri- 

 cultural statistics include cattle of all descriptions, 

 ploughs and thrashing implements and floors, quantities 

 of water used in irrigation, as also root and fruit 

 crop-, &c. At present, nothing beyond rougli giiesses 

 can be made at the statistics of strictly native agri- 

 culture. Thanks to the European planters and others 

 who have aided the compilers of Ferjuson's Ceylon 

 Handbook, the statistics of plantations, coffee, cin- 

 chona, tea, cacao, rubber, etc., are very closely cor- 

 rect ; while the figures for such native or semi-native 

 cultures as coconuts, cinnamon and lemongrass are 

 pretty near tlie mark. But when we deal with tlie 

 purely native cultivations of rice, dry grains, roots, 

 fruits other than coconuts, &c., we enter the region 

 of \'aguenes3. ihis ought not to be the case. From 

 the Customs Accounts we know exactly how many 

 bushels of grain (an enormous quantity) are annually 

 imported from the teeming granaries of the Indian 

 deltas and the swampi of Pegu ; and we are in the 

 hab.t of nidulging in the riue^n that the grain locally 

 giown may bear the proportion of two-thirds of the 



entu-e consumption against one-third imported. But 

 there is no real certainty as to the proportion locally 

 grown, any more than as to the average rates of yield per 

 acre in diflerent districts, lowland and upland, " under" 

 tanks or irrigated by streams led over terraces. In his 

 report on the forests of Ceylon, Mr. Vincent describes 

 the returns of dry grain obtained from chena land 

 (forest felled and burnt) by figures which seem to 

 us incredible. We know not the value of the evid- 

 ence he went on, but all such points ought to be 

 set officially at rest. To understand the condition 

 of the vast proportion of the natives of Ceylon who 

 live by grain growing and agriculture generally and 

 apx'ly remedies where needed fau'ly accurate inform- 

 ation as to the average returns yielded to enter- 

 P'izc and labour is necessary, but such fau-ly ac- 

 curate information is not now available. Our new 

 ruler is sure to ask for the figures which represent 

 the standard of material comfort and well-being in 

 which the sons of the soil live, but he must, like 

 isrevious Governors, be contented with mere approxim- 

 ations of rather a hazy character, until a proper and 

 efi'ectual system of obtaining agricultural statistics 

 is elaborated and enforced. The time for such a 

 reform, we submit, has come, and it seems possible 

 that much benefit might accrue to Ceylon from the 

 presence of a well-informed and receptive-minded 

 ofEcer at the Conference to be held in f'alcutti in 

 December of officers from all parts of India, whose 

 attention has specially been directed to the best 

 means of obtaining, classifying, aggregating, and 

 reasoning from agricultural statistics. From convers- 

 ation and discussion with them, the representative of 

 Ceylon could not but learn much which would be 

 of great value applied to the circumstances of the 

 colony ui a more or less modified form. 



PLANTERS AND LABOURERS IN FIJI. 

 The correspondent, " A. R.W.," who writes to us (see 

 page 410), from Forest Creek estate in Taviuui, Fiji, is 

 anxious to remove certain unfavourable impressions 

 which he supposes were produced by the letter we 

 published some time ago from "A. J. S. ," both as to the 

 realtions between planters and labourers and as to the 

 conditions under which coffee can be grown successfully 

 and free from such diseases as black leaf and Hcmileia 

 vaslalrix. " A. R. W." adduces the case of his own 

 estate to show that coffee flourishes far above 1,000 

 feet elevation, producing fruit plentifully and almost 

 free from tire presence of the leaf fungus. As we 

 read we cannot helj) remembering how confident 

 Ceylon planters were for the first half-dozen years 

 after the appearance of the fungus, that the pest 

 was temporary in its character and that, like the 

 previous visitation of coccus, it would disappear en- 

 tirely or hide itself in a few corners, leaving tlie 

 coffee trees none the worse. Admitting all the ex- 

 ceptional cucumstances of soil and climate in favour 

 of tl.e group of islands in the Pacific, we can rather 

 wish than fully hope that our sad experience of 

 gradual and then rapid decadence may not be re- 

 peated in " Far Fiji." The planters there have tlie 

 advantage of us that they can turn to sugar, as will 

 as tea, cinchona and other products, if coffee fails teem. 

 Where the planters in the Pacific are at a serious dis- 

 advantage is in regard to a reliable labour supply. 'I'hey 

 complain that Sir Arthur Clordon's native policy of ac- 

 cepting taxation in kind has deprived thi m of labourers 

 with benefit only to the native chiefs who hold the 

 ordinary cultivators iu a species of boudage. Such 



