VI PREFACE. 



What was the view of experts twenty years ago is 

 now as often as not looked upon as antiquated, and 

 fresh demands are continually being made upon science 

 and research for investigation and the fruits of novel 

 discoveries. Then also new districts have been opened 

 up, many deserving that the attention of those interested 

 in this branch of commerce should be drawn to them 

 as supplying fresh fields for enterprise and capital, and 

 changing by their prosperity the face of regions which, 

 though once clothed in dense jungle, are now patched 

 with the luxuriant green gardens characteristic of the 

 industry, and dotted with the white bungalows of European 

 superintendents. To gaze over a tract thus changing 

 hands from Nature's to men's is an experience not 

 easily forgotten ; the fair and fruitful plantations already 

 won from primeval barbarism lying along the hollows 

 of, it may be, a wild upland valley, surrounded on every 

 side by the swelling masses of forest only awaiting their 

 turn to come under the woodman's axe ; a mountain 

 stream winding down the glen, a thread of silver in the 

 dry weather, and a turgid torrent in the monsoon, sup- 

 plying water for the wants of man and beast, besides 

 motive power for pulping, saw-driving, and all the other 

 hundred wants of a plantation ; the long ghaut road 

 trailing away into the distance, with its slow-moving 

 trains of bullock carts or labourers, the populous native 

 huts, and all the many signs of busy active life. 



