OILS 



Trade 



Oil-seeds Proper. 



Chief Oil- 

 seeds. 



Kent-paying 

 Crop. 



External 

 Influences. 



Oocoanut. 



Rail-borne 

 Oil-seeds. ; 



OILS, OIL-SEEDS AND PEKFUMEEY 



added some portions of the acreages returned und^r cotton, hemp, poppy, 

 etc., and an estimate made for the areas of the oil-yielding trees, before a 

 full conception could be obtained of the total area of India normally 

 concerned in its oil traffic. But taking the statistics of the oil-seeds as 

 published, the area devoted to these crops would seem to have expanded 

 considerably within the past few years. In 1899-1900 the total came to 

 10,327,641 acres in the British Provinces alone, in 1903-4 it had expanded 

 to 14,545,966 acres, in 1904-5 stood at 13,518,768 acres, and in 1905-6 

 was 12,501,253, with, say, another million acres in the Native States. 

 But to that vast area would, as just explained, have to be added some 

 portion of the land devoted to cotton (which for the years 1904-7 has 

 averaged 21 million acres), as also the area under all the other plants 

 enumerated above that, like cotton, afford oil-seeds as by-products. 



Of the more important oil-seeds it may be said that til or jinjili (Sesa- 

 mum indicuni) is the most abundant and most widely cultivated of all. 

 It occupied, according to the Agricultural Statistics, over 4 million acres 

 in 1904-5, distributed chiefly in Burma, the Central Provinces, Madras 

 and Bombay (including Kathiawar and Baroda). Then come rape and 

 mustard with almost 3 million acres, mostly in Bengal and the Pan jab. 

 Lastly, linseed, a good third, with some 3 million acres, very largely in 

 Bengal, the United Provinces and the Central Provinces. The final reports 

 issued by the Commercial Intelligence Department estimate the areas for 

 1906-7 under these crops as follows : rape and mustard, 4,196,500 acres 

 (pure) and 2,210,000 acres (mixed) ; sesamum, 3,863,100 (pure) and 

 775,000 (mixed) ; linseed, 3,028,200 acres (pure) and 663,000 acres (mixed) ; 

 but in the case of sesamum the area for Burma is not included. Linseed is 

 the rent-paying oil-seed crop, only about 6 per cent, of the annual average 

 outturn being retained in the country. The other two crops, toTand mus- 

 tard and rape, are very much more largely consumed locally, and are accord- 

 ingly not so immediately influenced by the fluctuations of the foreign 

 markets. But a disturbing element in estimates of area and production 

 occurs, as already partially indicated, in the very large export trade in 

 cocoanut oil, and in the material (kopra) from which that oil is expressed, 

 through the fact that no area of production can be given for these products. 

 Moreover, kopra (or dried cocoanut kernel) is exported, to some extent at 

 least, as an article of food. It is at all events not treated as an oil-seed in 

 any of the official returns, though it affords an important oil. 



Traffic. Turning now to the official publications that furnish infor- 

 mation regarding the internal trade, we learn from the returns of rail- 

 borne goods that the most important receiving province is ordinarily 

 Bengal (an average of over 1,100,000 cwt. for the years 1902-7, drawn 

 chiefly from the United Provinces and Calcutta). Next the Panjab, with 

 an average of about 1,000,000 cwt. for the same period), depends upon 

 the United Provinces almost exclusively for its external supplies, which, 

 moreover, are chiefly classed as Other Oil-seeds. Then comes Madras 

 with an average of about 400,000 cwt. Lastly, Bombay imported during 

 the same period an average of about 400,000 cwt. of oil-seeds of all kinds, 

 chiefly from the Nizam's Territory and Mysore. But the internal transac- 

 tions of the provinces (the strictly local trade) is normally only 3| million 

 cwt. (for example, 3,478,180 cwt. in 1904-5 and 3,307,669 cwt. in 1905-6), 

 while the receipts of the port towns came in 1904-5 to 30,890,818 cwt., 

 in 1905-6 to 18,075,155 cwt., and in 1906-7 to 20,804,457 cwt. This is 



816 



