ORYZA 



SATIVA 



E. Bengal 



Districts. 



Races. 



Three Groups. 



Anton. 

 Aut. 



Brno. 

 Two Crops. 



Five Crops. 



Multiplicity 

 of Forms. 



Cultiva- 

 tion in 

 Dacca. 



THE EICE PLANT 



16,105,800 acres as compared with 15,960,200 acres in the previous year. 

 The total yield came to 122,476,700 cwt. This represents 23 per cent, of 

 the total rice crop of India. The forecast of the winter rice for 1905-6 

 shows 12,226,200 acres, which represented 17-2 per cent, of the winter rice 

 for the whole of British India. The chief districts were as follows : Bakar- 

 ganj, 1,436,900 acres ; Dinajpur, 1,160,000 acres ; Maimensingh, 1,130,000 

 acres ; Sylhet, 1,098,400 acres ; Eangpur, 837,900 acres ; Rajshahi, 

 636,900 acres ; and Tippera, 614,300 acres. 



Races cultivated. There are innumerable varieties of rice familiar to 

 cultivators under various names, and possessing particular properties 

 which make their cultivation suitable to particular localities. In the two 

 provinces of Bengal, they may all be referred to three primary classes, 

 according to the land on which they are grown, the season of year 

 when reaped, and the period taken in coming to maturity. Thus : 

 (1) The dman (or winter rice) crop, sown on low lands in May or June 

 and reaped in December or January. This is by far the most important 

 crop. (2) The dus or bhadoi (in official statistics designated as autumn 

 rice), or early rice crop, sown in April or May on comparatively high land 

 and reaped in August or September. (3) .The boro (or summer rice) crop, 

 sown in swamps in January or February and reaped in April or May. 



An important feature of the Bengal rice crop is the fact that a large 

 portion of the area bears two or more crops a year, a circumstance that 

 has led to the expression of a " vertical " as compared with a " horizontal " 

 area. In fact, it has been pointed out that a proprietor of an estate with a 

 fairly mixed soil might have three, four, or even five harvests of rice 

 every twelve months : (1) dus, from July to August ; (2) chotan dman, 

 from October to November ; (3) boran dman, from December to January ; 

 (4) boro, from April to May ; and (5) raida, from September to October. 



It has also been said that in many parts of Bengal two crops are all but 

 universal, hence it may be inferred how misleading a hard-and-fast per- 

 centage of rice area may be to the total cropped area. In the Indian 

 Museum will be found a collection of rices made in 1872 and for some years 

 subsequently. The collection finally brought together came to something 

 like 5,000 forms. These are probably not all distinct, but even if halved, 

 the number would still be sufficiently significant of the vast antiquity of 

 the cultivation. A remarkable fact is that the dus, dman, and boro rices 

 of one district are often so different from those of another, that if inter- 

 changed the one may not grow on the fields where the other has flourished 

 for centuries. Here the European farmer is confronted with a problem 

 scarcely known to scientific agriculture ; for the rice-cultivator of India 

 will detect the one from the other with a perfectly marvellous degree 

 of certainty. In Burma a few forms only constitute the chief crop, 

 and to these the milling apparatus now in use have been adapted, 

 and to such an extent that it is believed the Burma machinery would be 

 quite unsuited to Bengal, and, further, that milling in Bengal on the 

 European method would be impossible, unless a particular rice could be 

 guaranteed in sufficient quantity to justify the preparation of the required 

 special machinery. 



A. C. Sen gives an instructive account of the methods of cultivation in 

 the Dacca district, and as that is more or less applicable to the whole of 

 Bengal, as well as to Eastern Bengal and Assam, it may serve the purposes 

 of this work better than a series of abstracts of the varying methods 



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