THE BUD-ROT OF PALMS IN INDIA. 227 



large tree will give from 25 to 30 leaves per annum, and as each 

 house requires two or three thousand leaves and is thatched every 

 three or four years, a village of 1,000 houses uses the produce of 

 about 25,000 trees annually. 



The palm is so common, grows so freely and requires so little 

 attention, that the outbreak of a disease which destroyed large 

 numbers did not cause much alarm amongst the people. Were 

 it not that the more prized and tended coconuts were also attack- 

 ed, it is doubtful if information of its existence would even yet 

 have reached the Agricultural Department. That this attitude 

 was mistaken there can be little question : the value of the tree 

 is discounted by its abundance, but it is not too much to say that 

 its disappearance would change the whole economic condition of 

 the Delta. It is significant that in some of the severely attacked 

 districts the price of the cut leaves has risen in the past few years 

 from Rs. 3 to Rs. 9 or 10 per 1,000. 



III. — First appearance and spread of the disease. 



The disease is said to have first appeared in Addenkivari- 

 lanka, an island in the Gautami Godavari belonging to the Rama- 

 chendrapur Taluk, about 1890. From this it spread to both 

 banks of the river and- extended both along the banks and inland. 

 Amalapur and Ramachendrapur, chief towns of the Taluks of the 

 same names and situated respectively eight and eleven miles 

 inland from the right and left bank of the Gautami near Adden- 

 kivarilanka, were reached about 1897. Pillanka ( Cocanada 

 Taluk), a village on the left bank, about twelve miles down the 

 river, and Alamur, about eight miles up the river from the same 

 place, are said to have been afiected in 1898 or 1899. About 1902 

 the disease appeared at Vetlapalam, three miles south of Samal- 

 kota at the northern extremity of the Eastern Delta and extended 

 into the upland Taluk of Peddapur. By this date in the Eastern 

 Delta much of Ramachendrapur Taluk was affected and extension 

 was going on into Cocanada Taluk and towards the upland dis- 

 tricts near Peddapur. At the same time it is probable that all 



