10 LETTERS ON AGRICULTURE. 



to supplement the staple industry." The funds at the disposal of the- 

 department are £17,500 yearly for ten years, and Dr. D. Morris, 

 formerly assistant director in Kew, has been selected as commissioner. 

 Contrary to my impression before coming here, this department does 

 not include in so far as the expenditure of Imperial funds is concerned 

 all the British West Indies. The colonies of British Guiana with 65 

 million acres, Trinidad with over one million acres, and Jamaica with 

 more than 2£ million acres, were considered by the commission as able 

 to support their own excellent experiment stations, and receive from 

 the Imperial Government no grants in aid, the commissioner having 

 only advisory power over the independent stations of these colonies. 

 The total area, therefore, which will be affected by the Imperial grant 

 of £17,500 is only a trifle over 825,000 acres, only 580,000 of which 

 are cultivable. This does not necessarily mean that certain aid in the 

 way of agricultural instruction may not be given to the colonies of 

 British Guiana, Jamaica, and Trinidad. 



Dr. Morris's plans for the expenditure of the funds intrusted by 

 Parliament to his department have been outlined in the report of the 

 commission published in 1897, as well as somewhat more fully in a 

 speech before the agricultural conference held in Barbados previous 

 to our arrival. They include as principal features the continuance of 

 the very excellent experiments in the breeding of sugar cane which 

 were inaugurated by Dr. Harrison, of British Guiana, while he was 

 still in Barbados, and which have opened up a new field of research 

 and proved beyond a doubt that the sugar cane is capable of very 

 great improvement by means of crossing and selecting the seedling- 

 canes. There have been produced seedling varieties which contain more 

 than one-fourth more sugar per ton of cane than the best Bourbon cane 

 heretofore grown in these islands. The variety known as Barbados 

 No. 147 has yielded three-fourths of a ton more sugar per acre than the 

 Bourbon variety. 



It should be noted, however, that notwithstanding the great inter- 

 est in the experiments and the number of investigators engaged, there 

 has been no systematic breeding done and the male parentage of the 

 best canes is in no case known, while the female parent is in many 

 cases a matter of conjecture. At least, after diligent inquiry. 1 have 

 been unable to find any record of hand crosses being made. 



A second feature of the work will be the introduction of new plant 

 industries, and the various botanical stations already established on 

 the islands of Tobago, Grenada, St. Vincent, Barbados. St. Lucia, 

 Dominica, Monserrat, Antigua, and St. Kitts-Nevis, and the large and 

 excellently equipped botanic gardens in Jamaica, British Guiana, and 

 Trinidad make the systematic work of introduction a much simpler 

 matter; and were the conservatism of the average English planter less 

 great, many new and profitable industries, I believe, could be estab- 



