May i, 1885.] 



THE TROPTCAL AGRTCT7LTURTST. 



821 



the balance, if any, is the rent of land. At the Conirms- | 

 sioner's calculation of an eightfoUl yield 2J x 8-20— 17 — 3. 

 Three bushels represent the rent of land. When the Com- ; 

 niissioner demands RloO he demands the whole ot the > 

 rent to be paid to Government. When he demands Ki \ 

 per acre he actually wants the landowner to pay up Virtu- 

 ally the whole of the rent and something more. 



In British Burma the yield is 42 bushels and the as- 

 sessment B250 per acre. On this the Indian Agncuttunst 

 remarks :—•• The State thus exacts a larger payment trom 

 the cultivator than the so-called rack rent levied by the 

 zemindar in the Lower Provinces under the Permanent 

 Statement." If the amount be a rack rent where the land 

 yields 42 bushels per acre, what shall we say ot the Batti- I 

 caloa assessment? Let experienced Civil Servants answer. 

 SirB Frere says:— " Instead of taking from the ryots not 

 moro than half of the net produce the assessments re- 

 solve into 



(1) A land tax fixed more or less arbitrarily absorbing a 

 varying proportion of the net produce ; 



(2) A fall rent leaving nothing to the cultivator but the 

 wages of his labor and the interest oil his capital ; 



1 3) A full rent and something more, sometimes trench- 

 ing on the wages of labor and the profits of capital." 



(4) Sir L. Mallet says :—" Sometimes even lands that pay 

 no rent and do not pay even the cost of cultivation have 

 been assessed." 



(5) Sir "W. Wedderburn says-.— "Even lands not paying 

 the cost of cultivation are assessed." 



The Settlement Officers go by rule of guess. 

 Mr. Stormont of the Government farm in Kaudeish 

 says :— " Seven specimen plots gave an average crop value 

 of £2 5s per acre according to Government, but the actual 

 outturn gave only 19s 6d per acre ! " 



The first of the calculations for the production refers to 

 the best classes of fields yielding an eightfold. But the aver- 

 age yield for Batticaloa Korth, we are positive, can never 

 be above fivefo.d, i.e. 12^ bushels per acre. Deducting 2§ 

 bushels seed paddy we have 10 bushels, and one bushel at 

 Kl in the town and 50c to 75c in the country is what 

 is legitimately due to Government. The cultivators have 

 honestly paid for their irrigation works. There is no lack 

 of industry in them. After paying up the tenth or the 

 last instalment of the water-rate, they are told that a 

 further, though lower, rate would be levied nn them per- 

 petwdly. They have to thank themselves that they got 

 no inkling of this beforehand. The Queen's Advocate, 

 when introducing the Grain Tax Ordinance of 1878, got 

 his speech translated into all the vernaculars and circul- 

 ated in pamphlet form. The Government profess their 

 willingness even to give up a portion of their Land Re- 

 venue to better the condition of the cultivator. 



Look at the results. Galle district, average grain re- 

 venue for 14 years, R34.108; fixed by the Commissioner 

 now, E38,694 Hambantota district, average revenue for 14 

 years, B27.0O0; fixed by the Commissioner, B34,000. 

 As for Batticaloa, the Commissioner predicted two years 

 ago :— " On a revisiou of the paddy tithe, the produce will 

 be nearer KSO.OOO than K60,000, in which case Government 

 will realize 20 per cent per annum " on the outlay in the 

 irrigation works. If the railways should pay 5 per cent, 

 3 per cent, per cent, minus 2 per cent, why not be con- 

 tented with the 13 or 14 per cent now paid by the poor 

 cultivators of Batticaloa ? The Government wishes to free 

 them from the hands of the renters ; why play them into 

 the hands of usurers ? Let the Commissioner of Batti- 

 caloa North select, what, after inspection, he considers the 

 best, the middling and the wont of the fields in any group 

 of villages, and let him send his own assessor to super- 

 vise the harvesting of these fields and find out the aver- 

 age yield ; the cultivators and landowners would give him 

 every facility in this work. Now the peasants are simply 

 called to be present and see their respective amounts re- 

 gistered. The poor people ask for uo favor but a just as- 

 sessment after a due enquiry and consideration. The Com- 

 missioner is not to be a paid Government advocate but 

 to stand between the Government and the poor, as others 

 are reported to have done in the colony 30 or 40 years 

 age. Oh for the shades of the dead ! 



FIAT JPSTI TIA. 



Tea Manufacture is treated in a long and 

 comprehensive paper by an old hand in the Home 

 and Colonial Mo.il, from which wo quote on 

 page 813. The writer argues that the quality 

 of Indian teas is decidedly falling off, and that 

 science must be brought to bear both on the cultiv- 

 ation and preparation. Analytical Chemists are re- 

 quired in every tea district. The introduction quoted 

 trom today is rather theoretical ; but, perhaps, 

 " Artemus " may develope more practical information 

 in future instalments. We add to this extracts 

 from our daily local contemporary giving rules be- 

 lieved to have been framed by the late Mr. Cameron. 

 The Sau Thee.— Mr. J. S. Gamble writes to the Indian 

 Tea Gazette: — ""With reference to your article on the Sau 

 tree as a tea fertilizer, in your issue of January 20th, will 

 you allow me to suggest that perhaps the influence of the 

 tree is after all not due to any chemical action, but 

 merely, as indeed you suggest in your article, to its light, 

 well distributed shade, and to the very small leaflets caus- 

 ing the drip from it in rainy weather to be less harmful 

 than that from broader-leaved trees. I suspect that, these 

 are the real reasons for the better yield of the bushes 

 under ' Sau ' to those in the open. In regard to the 

 question of its influence on the soil, might I suggest that 

 some of the gentlemen who are interested in the question 

 should get analyses made of the soil taken from under 

 ' Sau ' and in the open, in portions of the garden which 

 otherwise appear to have the same soil, and where the 

 difference in the bushes is noticeable. I think the wood 

 would be a very useful one forteaboxes, but it has one draw- 

 back common to all the Albizzia woods — that of having 

 a very large proportion of sapwood, which sapwood is utt- 

 erly worthless, and decays or gets eaten by insects 

 a tonce." 



Coconut Cultivation. — It will do brothercoffee good, to 

 come down from his high pedestal of high flown theories, and 

 take a few lessons from his brother the coconut. The plant- 

 ation of coconut requires the every day presence of the 

 planter on the estate. If he be an observant man, and worth 

 his salt, he will, every day, in his rounds, find something to 

 do, something to supply. Besides the ploughing 'of the 

 land, and the burying of dry leaves, husks and the tying 

 up of cattle to the trunk, he would soon discover why 

 nuts fall before they are mature, and w hy some trees seem 

 all of a sudden to grow less productive. The careful 

 attention, in preserving and selecting the best nuts lor 

 planting, is no small matter ; while the curing of copperaU 

 with some knowledge of the effect of heat and wind always 

 enhances their price in the European market. A cocount 

 wants, sometimes, its portion of salt and lime, as human 

 beings want medicine. But ignorance leaves all this, to 

 the mercy of the cooly, or the kangany : while the man 

 who has made the cultivation of coconut his study, knows 

 to prescribe the necessary remedy to prevent decay. To 

 many of our readers a detailed account of coconut culti- 

 vation would be but carrying coals to New Castle. It is 

 quite enough for us to say, that coconut will ever hold 

 up its head as remunerative and profitable, when other pro- 

 duce will be on the wane. — Jaffna "Patriot." 



Damascus is the oldest city in the world. Tyre 

 and Sidon have ciumbled ; Baalbec isa ruin ; Palmyra 

 is burried in a desert ; Nineveh and Babylon have 

 disappeared from the Tigris and the Euphrates. Da- 

 mascus remains what it was before the days of Abraham 

 — a centre of trade and- travel, an isle of verdure in 

 the desert, " a presidential capital" with martial and 

 sacred associations extending through thirty centuries. 

 From Damascus came the damson, our blue plum, 

 and the delicious apricot of Portugal, called damasoo ; 

 damask, our beautiful fabric of cotton and silk, with 

 vines and flowers raised upon a smooth, bright ground ; 

 the damask rose introduced into England in the time of 

 Henry VIII. ; the Damascus blade, so famous the world 

 over for its keen edge and wonderful elasticity, the 

 secret ef whose manufacture was lost when Tamerlane 

 carried the artist into Persia. It is still a city of 

 flowers and bright waters ; the streams of Lebanon still 

 murmur and sparkle in the wilderness of the Syrian 

 gardens. — Ex. Southern Planter. 



