" Timehri" and Development. 171 



In the following - year, however, an authoritative statement by the 

 Government Analyst of British Guiana flatly contradicted this roseate 



view. 



In his Presidential address to the R. A. and C. Society on December 

 16th, 1897, Professor Harrison alluded to Dr. Morris's statement 

 thus : ; ' The latter (Dr. Morris) has alluded to the great fertility of the 

 interior of the colony. I do not know on what grounds he based his 

 supposition of this great fertility. I can find no grounds for believing 

 that in a country having the geological structure the interior of this 

 has — sandstones and some hundreds of conglomerates, archaean granites, 

 gneisses and crystalline schists — great tracts of land of exceptional 

 fertility will occur, although possibly tracts of limited area may occur in 

 valley lands or river bottoms or on the lines of dykes of certain classes of 

 intrusive rocks. I may mention that, as far as our analytical examina- 

 tions of some hundreds of the soils of the interior and seaboard extend, 

 no indication of exceptional fertility in soils, other than those of our 

 alluvial coastlands, have been obtained. All points to the wisdom of our 

 Dutch predecessors in ceasing their attempts to raise agricultural 

 products on many of the soils of the interior." 



Some years later he was still of the same opinion and appears to 

 have discouraged the hope that rubber could be grown in the colony. A 

 statement to this effect appears in a letter from Mr. W. K. McCarthy 

 published in the " Chronicle " of 25th May, 1907. 



In 1907, however, Professor Harrison had found reasons to consider 

 his earlier opinions erroneous for, in an address on ' : British Guiana and 

 its Resources ' given in the rooms of the West India Committee on 

 25th April of that year, he confirmed Dr. Morris's words which he had 

 contradicted in 1897 : — 



" Large areas of lowlying land in British Guiana," said the Professor 

 •• are ideally suited to the growth of Arabian coffee. During his visit 



in 1897 the present Imperial Commissioner of Agriculture, 



accompanied by the writer, went over some of the coffee estates and 

 expressed his opinion that in no part of the world which he had visited 

 did Arabian coffee grow and flourish as he saw it doing in British 

 ( ruiana, nor was it anywhere else so free from disease. 



" There are great areas of land, a few miles up the lower reaches of 

 the rivers, where good drainage can easily be secured, and upon them 

 cacao flourishes. 



"There can be few, if any, places better suited from soil and 



meteorological conditions than the coastlands of British Guiana 



for the cultivation of this fruit (bananas). 



•• Limes grow remarkably well on all the lighter soils of British 



Guiana, especially on those at some little distance from the sea 



from ten to thirty miles from the coast where cacao and coffee flourish ; 

 oranges, especially Tangerine oranges, and other varieties of citrus fruits 

 grow very well and yield excellently flavoured fruit in abundance. 



