PROPAGATION IN BENGAL 



ARECA 



CATECHU 



Cultivation 



Duration or 



SoU. 



plantations also a distinct percentage of cocoa-nuts are interplanted 

 IMIUM-_' tin' betel-nuts, so that an old plantation in many cases has lost all 

 ! regularity and becomes a dense jungle of palms with only a 

 winding foot j>;ith leading to the owner's house. This generally stands on 

 iln- hank of a tank and near the middle of the holding. 



Tin- seasons of flowering and fruiting may be said to be distributed swaom of 

 throughout the year. The flowers that form in January will ripen fruit 

 in Ortolier; the flowers formed in March will fruit in December and 

 .lamia rv. The harvesting period is from October to the beginning or 

 middle of January, but occasionally the new flowers may begin to form 

 ember or January on trees from which last year's fruits have not 

 been collected. 



If a few trees are planted near villages, but not in regular groves, the 

 betel-nut may fruit when it is only 6 or 7 years of age. In plantations they 

 raivlv fruit before the tenth or twelfth year. The trees subsequently put 

 out in the plantation (just as the first set begins to flower) do not come into 

 bearing for 20 years. There is no third planting except, as already stated, 

 to fill up vacancies. Land formerly covered with betel-nuts, if re-planted 

 with them, even after a rest of several years, in the form of mandar groves, 

 does not, as a rule, yield until the palms are 20 years old. It will thus 

 be seen that it takes at least 30 years before a betel-nut plantation 

 comes into full bearing. The fruiting life of a tree may be put at from 

 30 to 50 or 60 years after maturity, and the total life of the tree might 

 thus be stated at from 60 to 100 years. 



The soil of the Bengal plantations is the ordinary grey sandy loam on 

 which rice is grown. Occasionally the plantations are surrounded by a ditch 

 and wall made of the soil thrown up from the ditch, but this appears to be 

 more intended for protection than drainage. More inland, in the districts NO drainage. 

 of Tippera, Dacca, Sylhet, Goalpara and Rangpur, the palm is grown on 

 considerably higher land, and usually as special gardens or avenues in 

 gardens, or along the high banks of the streams. In Northern Bengal and 

 Assam the pan leaf is very often trained to grow on the Areca palm stems, 

 so that the two industries are combined, while in the great nut-producing 

 districts of the Sundribans the betel-leaf is never or very rarely grown in 

 the nut plantations. In the lower portions of Sylhet and Cachar, on the 

 other hand, betel-palm groves and pepper betel-leaf houses are very char- 

 acteristic features of the river-banks. Taylor informs us that the average 

 number of trees to a bigha in the Dacca district (two-thirds of an acre ap- 

 proximately) would be about 700, but he adds the palm is usually planted 

 around gardens and huts and not in solid clumps. 



Bombay Presidency. The betel-nut may be said to be chiefly grown 

 along the coast from Kolaba, Thana and Kanara to Goa. Interesting 

 particulars will be found in the Gazetteers of these districts and more 

 recently in Mollison's special Report on the Betel-nut, Pepper and Car- 

 damom Gardens of Kanara, as also in his Textbook of Agriculture (I.e. 257-8). 

 He there tells us that the Areca is cultivated chiefly by Haviks a race of 

 cultivators supposed to have come originally from Mysore. " It does not 

 matter much," he writes, " whether the soil is naturally fertile or not, 

 because the yield of the crops grown is mostly affected by the quantity and 

 quality of manure directly applied. ... In many gardens irrigation is 

 not required even in the hot weather. At this time a trickling stream, fed 

 from natural springs, may be seen running along the main channels or a 



85 



Betel-leaf and 

 Nut Gardens. 



Bombay. 



Soil. 



