58o 



NA TURE 



\April 24, 1890 



to Bombay. The export from Delhi is small. Besides 

 this many stations have a few orange orchards for local 

 consumption — "a mere nothing." 



It is evident from this that Khasia is the most im- 

 portant orange centre, and unfortunately Dr. Bonavia has 

 had to treat this part of the subject second-hand. He. 

 hardly says anything about the Central Indian cultivation, 

 except the remark (p. 127), " I do not know what the 

 composition is of the black soil of the Central Provinces," 

 This soil, which produces such excellent Mandarins, 

 everybody knows to be disintegrated trap, i.e. the same 

 soil which alone produces them in Khasia. 



Dr. Bonavia spends much space in attempting to show 

 that the suntara orange is not a Mandarin ; he maintains 

 that the suntara and Mandarin are nearly allied, and 

 together form the distinct race (or species) C. nobilis. 

 He admits that people in Ceylon and elsewhere will call 

 the suntara the Mandarin, but he strongly denies that the 

 Mandarin is a suntara ; he may as strongly deny that the 

 greengage is a plum. The best Khasi oranges run very 

 close on the true Mandarin. The C nobilis now grows 

 as if wild from the hills of Southern China, probably to 

 Assam (Khasia); it is also scattered along the outer 

 Himalaya of Sikkim and Nepal. The centre of this area 

 is almost certainly its " origin." Dr. Bonavia speaks of 

 the Butwal (south of Nepal) orange as the sweetest 

 or?.nge in India : he has not tasted from the tree the 

 Khasi orange at the end of January, which is considered 

 too sweet by many Europeans. The Khasi orange is in 

 fact larger than the Butwal ; and for a sweet orange there 

 is no finer in India or elsewhere. 



Dr. Bonavia lays stress on the fact that the true 

 Mandarin is when dead ripe a " varnished green," while 

 the suntara is " from orange-yellow to lobster-red " ; he 

 found that the green oranges of Ceylon in travelling to 

 Etawah (21 days' journey) had turned or were turning 

 yellow ; and he decides triumphantly that " the green 

 orange has no locus standi.^' The fact is otherwise : the 

 best Khasi oranges when dead ripe on the tree are an 

 intense " varnished green." Picked somewhat unripe, 

 and carried in a native boat (21-30 days) to Calcutta, 

 they arrive a dull yellow or turning yellow. And perhaps 

 Dr. Bonavia could prove by prolonging the journey that 

 their true colour is black. The withered, unripe-picked, 

 dull yellow, mawkish, Calcutta orange is a very different 

 thing from the orange ripe on the tree above Chela. 



The Mandarin grows best in steaming valleys just within 

 the hills (and above all on disintegrated trap) at an 

 elevation of 250-2000 feet : here it grows from seed 

 without any trouble. In the plains, the fruit is worse the 

 farther you recede from the hills, and great pains must be 

 taken with the culture. Dr. Bonavia was unfortunate in 

 having to experiment with the orange at Lucknow ; free- 

 trade principles would suggest that the most promising 

 plan would be to improve the communications between 

 the orange districts and the great centres of consumption. 

 It was not the fault, however, of Dr. Bonavia that he had 

 to try to grow oranges where they naturally will not grow. 

 But Dr. Bonavia does not seem, with all the extensive 

 cuttings in his appendix, to have got from the literature 

 the help in his task that he should have got. He 

 hazards, for example, a speculation (p. 1 16) that " the stock 

 on which the Mandarin is grafted mav have some 



influence " ; apparently unaware that the regular practice 

 is to graft the Tangerine on the common orange, as it 

 then becomes a larger tree giving a more certain crop of 

 larger fruit. 



Quite apart from the question of oranges, it is well 

 worth while to examine in some detail the method of Dr. 

 Bonavia in obtaining information about the Khasi orange 

 and its results, because it throws a flood of light on 

 Indian reports in general. Dr. Bonavia appears to have 

 tried three sources of information, viz. (a) a description of 

 the orange-groves by Mr. Brownlow, (/3) the answers to 

 his questions returned by the Deputy-Commissioner of 

 Sylhet, (y) similar answers from the Rev. Jerman Jones. 

 Dr. Bonavia does not refer to the " Himalayan Journals " of 

 Sir J. D. Hooker, vol. ii ; nor to Medlicott in Mem. Geol. 

 Sur vey Ind., vol. vii. Art. 3. From these two latter 

 sources, a very fair idea of the circumstances of the orange- 

 groves of Khasia can be gained. Dr. Bonavia appears 

 not to have the wildest notion of the country, climate, or 

 soil. 



Turning to Medlicott's map, we see that there are 

 three large valleys (Chela, Umwai, and Sobhar), at the 

 south extremity of the Khasi Hills, which are occupied 

 by the " Sylhet trap." This trap extends in the Chela 

 valley from the debouchement of the river at Chela up 

 to 2800 feet at the head below Mamloo. This trap 

 decomposes into a reddish earth, and there occur soft 

 ashy beds very like forms of the Deccan trap. All three 

 valleys are excessively steep, the undecomposed trap 

 standing in huge masses. The rain-fall varies from 300 

 to 500 inches per annum. These valleys are thus rough 

 and broken, and full of precipices inaccessible but by 

 ladders and ropes. Intensely hot and steamy, and pro- 

 tected from winds, they exhibited a richer vegetation to 

 Sir Joseph Hooker than he had seen in the Himalaya. 



In the Chela valley, at the present time, the Mandarin 

 orange occupies the whole area of the trap. The two 

 other valleys are less completely occupied. There is also 

 an orange-grove on a small trap area a few miles east, 

 behind Jynteapore. 



The Khasi cultivation is simple. The pips of the orange 

 are raised without difficulty in a damp seed-bed, often in 

 a nook shaded by a boulder of trap. A piece of the jungle 

 is half cleared {i.e. most of the larger trees, some of the 

 smaller) ; and the young orange-trees, 3-5 feet high, are 

 stuck out promiscuously in the partial shade left ; the root 

 of each is pushed if possible under the heel of a block of 

 trap. When the young trees have got hold enough to 

 bear the sun, the other half of the jungle is roughly cut. 

 The trees require no further labour. The orange-groves 

 in the cold weather form a monkeys' paradise, and it is 

 necessary to destroy these. Sometimes two or three 

 villages unite, enclose the monkeys, and drive them 

 down to an angle of the main stream, where they are 

 slaughtered pitilessly. The sight of a single monkey is 

 always sufficient to exasperate a Tyrna man to fury. 



The crop is enormous ; the river at Chela flows some- 

 times covered apparently with oranges. Before the season 

 is half over, the pigs are so surfeited that their oranges 

 have to be peelfed for them. The valley has enormously 

 increased in wealth in the last half-century. It is a Khasi 

 saying that a man here may work for three days and eat 

 for a month. 



