FIELD NATURALISTS' CLUB. 303 



ton of rubber per acre at the end of the 2nd year, he would 

 have but small cause to bewail his defunct sugar cane. 



The above suggestions, coupled with the others which 

 follow, could be tried under the best auspices by one or more 

 of the large sugar estate proprietors who are about to cease 

 sugar cultivation ; one or a company of them might devote 

 some money to putting an abandoned estate under a suitable 

 manager for say 3 to 5 years, to try on a working scale various 

 promising cultivations. No cultivation I can think of to 

 suggest would cost as much as an equal area of sugar, nor 

 can I think of any which fails to promise a better return at 

 less cost. 



It has almost become a proverb that ' nothing is so 

 difficult as to re-establish a cultivation in a country where it 

 has once died out !' But perhaps there is some difference in 

 favour of cultivations which have been killed out. The first 

 cultivation the British planter in the W.I. found a profitable 

 industry was Indigo. More rapid fortunes were made out it 

 then, — when it was worth a guinea a pound, — than have been 

 made out of any other West Indian cultivation since. It was killed 

 out suddenly in one year by an import duty of about £20 per 

 cwt. being imposed upon it in England, at a time when there 

 were no other markets open to it. 



The industry then became the heritage of the East Indian 

 planters, and down till pretty recently a most valuable one, 

 but the invention of coal tar dyes, as well as other events have 

 much decreased its value, which at present stands about 7/6 to 

 2/- per lb. according to quality. But even at these prices in 

 suitable localities with improved modes of preparation, it is 

 still a profitable industry. 



The plant, in several varieties, is wild in many places in 

 Trinidad and Tobago. And any one acquainted with the 

 industry in the East Indies, seeing the wild plant here is at 

 once struck with its vastly greater luxuriance. It partially 

 explained to me why in Edwards ' History ' the West Indian crops 

 of old were so much heavier than those of the present time in 

 India. The average yield there is 50-60 lbs. per acre per 

 first cutting, per second cutting about half that weight, say 

 25 lbs. There is usually no third ratoon to cut. In the last 

 century in the West Indies the average crop is said to have been 

 200 to 300 lbs. per acre, and that is what the Central American 

 growers still count on. But in the best lands in India and Java 

 the planter thinks himself lucky to get one good ratoon cutting 

 while as the result of actual experiment with a very few plants 

 on very poor land in Tobago I obtained five good cuttings in 

 one year. Now, suppose an abandoned sugar estate were to 



