H. E. ANNETT. 



287 



ruined, while in Bengal all sugar fell in value below the cost of 

 production, and large sums of British capital invested in sugar 

 refineries there were annihilated. In 1851 a second glut and panic 

 occurred in the markets of Great Britain and in January and 

 February 1852 sugars in Calcutta were nearly unsaleable. The 

 date crop would have been a large one but for this discouragement 

 and the date cultivators abandoned the trees. 



The business of date tree cultivation being with two or three 

 isolated exceptions entirely carried out by the impoverished ryot, 

 during these two periods of depression at least, all planting of 

 young trees was suspended and all care of young plantations neglec- 

 ted, but it is probable the checks were lasting in their effects, and that 

 the planting since 1848 did not continue in the same increasing ratio 

 as before that year. Still productions continued to increase and in 

 1857-58 the annual production of dry sugar was estimated at 35,000 

 tons equal to 88,000 tons of gur, of which two-thirds were exported to 

 Calcutta. Had the cultivation not received the checks mentioned, 

 there seems no doubt the produce would have again quadrupled 

 during the eight years 1850-58 as it did from 1838-46. 



Summary of Progress of Cultivation. 



So great and steady an increase in cultivation, in spite of 

 partial checks, is sufficient evidence of its value as a remunerative 

 branch of industry. The slave emancipation measures gradually 

 decreased the supplies of sugar from the West Indies and this partly 

 accounts for the rapid rise in date sugar production in the middle 

 of the last century. 



