April, 1910.] 



315 



Edible Products, 



To turn, however, to what has been 

 done in the direction of guarding the 

 plant against its natural enemies in the 

 shape of insects and fungi, the planter 

 has been put in possession of the history 

 of each individual blight or pest as it 

 arrived upon the scone of action. It can 

 be easily understood that to combat a 

 blight whose habits are known is a very 

 different matter from fighting in the 

 dark a somewhat insidious enemy whose 

 antecedents cannot be traced, and whose 

 methods of working are obscure and 

 untraceable. The day was when the 

 planter had to be satisfied in his mind 

 that, when he was visited by a plague 

 of caterpillars, the caterpillars were 

 actually there on the bushes, and all he 

 could do was to pick them off to the 

 best of his ability and pray that he 

 might not be visited by a recurrence of 

 the evil. If the plague returned he 

 looked upon it as a visitation of 

 Providence, and while dimly aware that 

 the same might be of the beneficent 

 nature usually associated with that 

 abstruse, indefinable, but kindly power, 

 he once more did his best to defeat its 

 benevolent purpose for the sake of his 

 more practical and material benefactors 

 — his shareholders — perhaps thinking 

 that he was risking his own chance of 

 Heaven in doing so. The publication of 

 the ponderous volume on pests and 

 blights by Sir George Watt and Dr. 

 Mann, teeming with a mass of know- 

 ledge and information on these points, 

 however, altered the planters' views 

 altogether, and when caterpillar and 

 other insect pests oc fungus blights 

 appear on his tea bushes to-day, he 

 identities the species by this book, and 

 coolly proceeds to destroy the root of the 

 evil by collecting and burning the larvae 

 of the insects or the mycelium of the 

 fungus by the means advocated, thus 

 taking precautions to prevent a further 

 attack. 



SlRDARI. 



RICE CULTIVATION IN BURMA. 



(From the Indian Agriculturist, Vol. 



XXXIV., No. 2, February 1, 1909.) 



Mr. A. McKerrall, M.A., B.sc, the 

 Deputy Director of Agriculture, Burma, 

 has a very interesting contribution on 

 rice cultivation in Lower Burma in the 

 Agricultural Journal of India. Rice, 

 as everyone knows, has long been the 

 Province's chief staple of commerce and 

 the most important item in its agri- 

 culture. Admirably adapted both as 

 regards soil and climate for the pro- 

 duction of this cereal, Burma is to-day 

 the chief rice-growing country in the 



East, if not in the whole world. The 

 export of rice for the yea^ 1907-1908 may 

 be put down at about 1\ million tons of 

 cleaned cargo rice. The price of paddy 

 went up as high as P. 168 per 100 baskets, 

 and the new season's crop, tbis year, 

 opened at P. 125 and P. 127. But the 

 European millers combining, have man- 

 aged to cause prices to fall to P. 100. 

 However, as the season advances the 

 price is bound to go higher. Last year, 

 the great demand for the famine dis- 

 tricts naturally caused an abnormal in- 

 crease in prices ; but this year conditions 

 are more favourable in India, and there 

 is, therefore, no reason why such high 

 prices should be maintained. 



Every year, almost, sees an increase of 

 about 8 to 9 per cent, of land brought 

 under paddy cultivation in Burma, 

 Within the Deltaic areas, where the 

 bulk of the rice crop is grown, the rain- 

 fall is plentiful, ranging from 97 inches 

 in the Pegu district, including Rangoon 

 and its neighbourhood, to 133 inches at 

 Bassein, 198 inches at Akyab, and 214,211 

 and 219 inches in the Amherst, Tavoy 

 and Thaton districts, respectively. The 

 rainfall lasts from April to November, 

 or for a period of six and half to seven 

 months. The soil is geologically termed 

 recent alluvium, consisting of a stiff clay 

 overlying a still stiffer clay subsoil, 

 which in the hot weather 



Assumes a Hardness Precluding 

 Cultivation 

 of any kind at that season of the year. 

 The remarkable feature of the soil is its 

 ability to be cultivated year after year 

 without manure and without seemingly 

 exhausting its fertility. The only factors 

 which keep it from becoming sterile is 

 apparently the six months' rest and the 

 decomposition of the long dry stubble 

 and roots with the setting in of the rains, 

 their manuring properties being woi'ked 

 into the soil by the plough. Without a 

 scientific rotation of crops, such as is 

 understood in Europe, to prevent the 

 exhaustion of the land, Mr. McKerrall 

 thinks it highly probable that these 

 deltaic paddy lands, cropped year after 

 year, without manure of any kind, are 

 slowly but gradually undergoing exhaus- 

 tion — an assumption favoured by the 

 Burruan cultivator's preference for new 

 laud situated low enough to secure an 

 efficient water supply, or laud adjacent 

 to villages, which is accessible to manurial 

 matter washed down from houses and 

 'cattle sheds during the first showers of 

 the monsoon. In fact, the Deputy Direc- 

 tor of Agriculture considers there is 

 good reason to suppose that future 

 investigations on experimental farms 

 will prove that the delta paddy soils 



