3* 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[July i, 1884. 



on with planting fruit, leaf, oil, fibre, and bark-yielding 

 trees, and in diggiug plumbago, and so creating wealth 

 through industries for which our island is adapted pre- 

 eminently over most other lauds. " Buy in the cheapest, 

 sell in the dearest market " settles the question, and 

 it must be noted that the great import of Indian rice 

 has taken place pari passu, with the advance in planting. 

 Thus, 45 years ago, when coffee planting had only begun, 

 less than half-a-million bushels of rice imports into Ceylon 

 Biifficed ; in 1877, nearly seven million bushels were re- 

 quired, but with the check to coffee (from the dire fungus 

 disease on the coffee leaf), this has now fallen to five 

 million bushels. No doubt there are Sinhalese and Tamils 

 In Ceylon who, if they devoted time and energies which 

 at present are far from being fully utilized, to rice culture, 

 might furnish a larger local supply ; but when the emulative 

 spirit and education come to call out the dormant 

 industry of the sections . of people referred to, query 

 whether they may not find palms and tea more profitable to 

 cultivate, even if they have to buy their rice. India is likely 

 as time rolls on, to beat America and Australia in the supply 

 of cheap wheat; and when the export duty ou her rice 

 is taken off (as was recently hinted at) India is certain to 

 give Ceylon, Mauritius, and even the West Indies, cheaper 

 rice that they can raise, and this fact would, I am sure, be 

 still more fully realized if the so-called "food taxes' 1 in 

 Ceylon (the Customs duty on imports and the rent on rice 

 fields) were both abolished. Inasmuch as this (grain) is 

 the only branch of agriculture in Ceylon on which a direct 

 revenue levy (rent) is made, civil servants, I sometimes 

 think, are apt to overestimate its importance, just as they 

 are obliged to give it so much more of their personal at- 

 tention. But I hope that both the Government and their 

 officers will realize,the vast advantages Ceylon has as a palm, 

 fruit, tea leaf, bark and fibre producing country — the land 

 of spices and tropical products par excellence — and will do 

 all in their power to encourage the people in these profit- 

 able iudusrtries, while by no means discouraging the rice 

 cultivation to which they are already attached. As regards 

 the occupied, populous districts of Ceylon — the Western, 

 Central, and Southern provinces (Mr. Ferguson here illus- 

 trated hia remarks on the large map of Ceylon on the 

 Willi), in which 2,000,000 out of 2,800,000 of people are 

 found, and over which there is a well distributed and 

 generally abundant rainfall, we have conditions of climate, 

 soil, and transport which point to planting and garden 

 cultivation as more suitable and profitable than rice or 

 other cereal cultivation. Nor can it be. denied that the 

 native Sinhalese and Tamils, among whom education is 

 rapidly spreading, have shown any lack of emulation in 

 competing with, or copying the example of, the European 

 planters. The fact that, before the disease-fungus ap- 

 peared, the natives had increased their export of "native 

 coffee" from 10,000 to 220,000 cwt. of coffee in a generation, 

 shows this. The greatly-increased export of cinnamon bark, 

 and of plumbago, almost entirely from native hands, offers 

 other proofs; but still more striking is the enormously deve- 

 loped cultivation of palm trees — more especially of the coco- 

 nut, palmyra-, areca, kitool palms — within the past twenty 

 to thirty years. So great is this industry now that it covers 

 a far larger area than rice culture, and if we add in other 

 edible fruits, we get 860,000 acres planted with palms and 

 fruit trees, against 810,000 acres cultivated annually with 

 rice and all other cereals. I fear the Government and Civil 

 servants of Ceylon do not altogether realize that their palm 

 and fruit tree industry is at least of as much importance to 

 the natives of Ceylon as their rice culture. Not only does 

 the former supply an export trade worth fully 800,000^. a 

 year, but the fruits enter very largely into the food of the 

 people; so that while grain is the staple, yet, if rice failed 

 altogether, there are probably large districts in Ceylon in 

 which the natives with their coconut, palmyra and fruit 

 trees, could'ward off famine effectually. Teunent mentions 

 a Kandiau family in Ambegamua, who supported themselves 

 by the produce of one kitool {Ctnyota wrens) tree ; and the 

 ownership of ten coco-palms and two ]"ak trees have been 

 counted to render a Sinhalese man independent. A crew of 

 English sailors wrecked on a South Pacific island two years 

 ago lived for some months on nothing but coco-nuts and 

 fish, and gained in weight. Now let me allude to a curious 

 fact to which my attention has only recently been directed. 

 Out of the 5,000 tauks counted in Ceylon in 1867, most of 

 them breached, it is worthy of note that the great Sinhalese 



kmg, Prakrnma Bahu, of himself, 700 years ago constructed 

 or restored not less than 2,800. Now at this time, 1,153 

 a. d., the vast proportion of the population of Ceylon was 

 congregated in the north, north-west, and east of Ceylon, 

 perhaps 3 to 4 million of people, where now there are only 

 800,000, and where large districts lie waste, covered with 

 jungle forest with the remains of these hundreds and 

 thousands of ancient tanks. Now, before the devastations 

 of war had driven the people to the hills and to the 

 south and west, there can he no doubt that the region referred 

 to was admirably adapted for rice culture and irrigation 

 works, and that rice was pre-eminently the (almost the 

 sole) staple, because it is a fact that at that time the 

 coconut and palmyra, or at any rate the coconut palm 

 was practically unknown to the people of Ceylon! No 

 mention is made of it in lists of desirable fruit trees made 

 at that time.* How great the difference now, and how 

 easily may we realize the vast importance of rice at that 

 time to king and people. Now the Jaffna peninsula, in 

 the far north, the north-west, west, and southern coasts, 

 and a few parts of the east coast of Ceylon, ftrm one 

 continuous grove of palm trees, almost entirely owned by 

 natives. Nor are our Sinhalese, and Tamils backward to 

 copy the European planters in reference to the new pro- 

 ducts of late years being introduced into Ceylon. They 

 have gone in for cinchona planting — the complaint being 

 that they too often steal the nursery plants of the colo- 

 nists — (laughter)— for cacao and even for rubber trees ; but 

 especially are the Sinhalese likely to become extensive 

 growers of the tea plant, which flourishes so well from sea 

 level to 6.000 feet high all over the south, west, and centre 

 of Ceylon, that the wonder to us is that we did not all 

 begin tea growing 20 or 30 years earlier, a leaf crop in 

 our Ceylon climate being so much safer and more abund- 

 ant than one of fruit, such as coffee. Every Government 

 district officer in Ceylon ought to have an experimental 

 garden fur new products, to show and supply to the nat- 

 ives near his kachcheri (office) ; and Agri-Horticultural 

 Exhibitions with prizes, and fairs (as already begun at 

 Kurunegala), ought to be frequent. I hope it will not be 

 supposed I am under-rating the good done by irrigation, 

 especially in the North-Oentral, and Eastern provinces. 

 I am only anxious that the Government and public officers 

 should recognize that even here the beneficent revival of 

 " Rajacaria" might be utilized for palm and other fruit- 

 tree planting, as well as for rice,f and to point out 

 the importance of encouragiug an industrial movement 

 which already gives Ceylon a crop of over 500 mil- 

 lions of coco and palmyra nuts a year. Mr. Mosse 

 alludes to the fact that the absence of irrigation may, 

 in a year of drought, mean famine to Ceylon and 

 to Indian districts; but I would wish to recall the fact 

 officially proclaimed as showing the value of good cheap 

 means of transport in both countries, namely, that there 

 has never in the year of greatest famine been any lack of 

 food for all its people in India — only, while large districts 

 had a super-abundant crop, others, where the crops failed 

 had not the means in road, railway, or canal of drawing 

 ou that surplus which was going to waste, often not far 

 away. As regards Ceylon agriculture, both in the hands 

 of native and European planters, I may safely say that 

 never did it occupy a sounder position in itself than to- 

 day; for, apart from rice and palms, we have now three 

 established staples — tea, cacao, cinchona — and two or three 

 more — rubber, new spices, &c. — in an experimental stage, 

 where but a .few years ago we had only the one namely, 

 coffee. Better prospects are before this last-mentioned 

 staple this year ; but, as a colony, we have not now 

 "all our eggs in one basket," and from tea especi- 

 ally we may expect great results. It is well this should 

 be known at a time when the fall of the Oriental Bank 

 and the Ceylon (far more properly the Mauritius) 

 Company (Limited) is likely to do so much harm to fhe 

 name and repute of Ceylon. It should be widely known 

 that we have in a healthy climate, in splendid roads an 

 admirable railway system, in cheap free labour, every en- 



* Up to the time of the Dutch, in fact, little was made 

 of coconut cultivation in Ceylon, and the first cargo of 

 coconut oil from Ceylon came to Europe in 1820. 



f Mr. Mosse quotes Mr. Twynam's report on the benefit 

 of irrigation for fruit-culture in the Vanni district. 



