* 







the Bengal Rhea Syndicate, entered into an agreement with various 

 planters in the district of Durbungah, in Tirhut, under which the 

 growers were to put a definite area under Ramie, and provide 

 Rhea stalks, the syndicate supplying the necessary machines to 

 produce from these the commercial fibre. It has long been 

 known that there is no serious difficulty attending the cultivation 

 of Ramie, provided the soil is suitable and the climatic conditions 

 are at all favourable. As has already been pointed out (Kew 

 Bulletin, 1888, p. 298), the chief difficulty is as regards the 

 decortication of the Ramie stalks. The experience in Tirhut is 

 therefore of further interest as throwing light on such practical 

 advances as may have been made in this direction. 



That the plant could be successfully grown in Tirhut on an 

 experimental scale was already known ; various planters in Tirhut 

 had demonstrated this in plots containing plants raised from roots 

 supplied from the Royal Botanic Garden at Calcutta, and to a 

 smaller extent from the Botanic Garden at Saharanpur. But what 

 Sir G. Watt had in view, and what it was desirable to test was 

 whether, if the difficulties attending decortication were overcome, 

 the cultivation of the plant in Tirhut was likely to prove 

 remunerative commercially. The original contracts entered into 

 by the syndicate in question were nine in number ; the area 

 involved amounted to 3,700 acres. Actually, however, owing to 

 difficulties connected with soil and rainfall, operations had to be 

 restricted to seven concerns with an aggregate area of 3,100 acres, 

 and of the suitable available land the amount actually under 

 Ramie, in February, 1 906, was 1,950 acres. The results of these 

 operations, which have now extended over several years, are 

 calculated to throw some light on both questions. 



^ These results have been made generally available by the publica- 

 tion in the Journal (V Agriculture Tropicale for June 30, 1906, of 

 the French text of an account of the operations, which is there 

 stated to have been supplied on February 10, 1906, to the Director 

 of Agriculture, Bengal, by Mr. J. Karpeles, the managing director 

 of the Bengal Rhea Syndicate. The original agreement entered 

 into by the syndicate with the planters in Durbungah stipulated 

 that the growers were to produce the Ramie stalks, while the 

 syndicate were to supply the machines for preparing the com- 

 mercial fibrf>. The fact that the firm in Calcutta to which the 

 syndicate's managing director belongs acted as agents in India 

 for the machine especially devised by Mr. Faure for dealing with 

 Ramie, adds further to the interest of the account. 



In the Queensland Agricultural Journal for November, 1906, 

 p. 247, is given a translation of the report referred to, which is 

 here reprinted. Its value is considerable owing to the fairness 

 with which the results obtained and the difficulties encountered 

 by the Bengal Rhea Syndicate have been stated. But, as pointed 

 out in the Queensland Agricultural Journal, it possesses another 

 interest— it gives for the first time, so far at least as India is con- 

 cerned, an account of operations on a scale sufficiently extensive 

 to justify the formation of reliable estimates for a plantation :— 



44 At the outset there was considerable difficulty in procuring the 

 necessary quantity of plants to establish the plantations. Some 

 small lots of stocks (rooted plants) were certainly obtained from 



