PAET II. 



HlSTOKICAL AND STATISTICS OF PRODUCTION. 



Having shown how important an industry the production of 

 palm sugar is, it may be of interest to give a short account of the 

 history of its growth in Bengal. In this chapter the writer does 

 not propose to include other palm sugar producing tracts in India 

 because he has no knowledge of them. 



Almost all the palm sugar produced in Bengal is made from 

 the wild date (Phoenix sylvestris). In certain parts of the Sunder- 

 bunds a small amount is produced from the palmyra palm (Boras- 

 sus flabelliformis). 



In Jessore, the most important of the sugar producing districts, 

 the industry is an old one. The Collector of Jessore in 1788 

 enumerated as one of the losses caused by the cyclone of 1787 the 

 injury to the date trees and the weakening of the sugar produce. 1 

 Later on, in 1792, he wrote that "date sugar is largely manufac- 

 tured and exported," and in a statistical table prepared in 1791 we 

 find it recorded that 20,000 maunds was the annual produce of the 

 sugar cultivation and that about half of this was exported to 

 Calcutta. At that time, however, there was a considerable produc- 

 tion of cane sugar as well. 



Production 2 of date sugar greatly increased in Bengal from 

 1830 onwards, though not to the extent that it would doubtless have 

 done, had it not been checked by the violent fluctuation in its value, 

 which will be referred to presently. The following brief sketch of its 

 progress is necessarily imperfect from the great want of reliable 

 statistics on which to frame it. Previous to the first inroads on the 



1 See report on tho district of Jessore by Westland, 1874. 



* The date tree, a prize essay on the manufacture of its sugar, S. H. Robinson, 1858. 



