April, 1910,1 



851 



Scientific A gricitlhire-. 



ordinary farm crop. In the third year, 

 the seed collected from the crop grown 

 on the farm will be distributed iu the 

 district ; the rejected plant of the second 

 year's selection will supply the seed for 

 the farm, and the twelve best plants will 

 again be the mother plants for next 

 year. This process will be carried out 

 every year, and will result in the stock 

 of farm seed being gradually improved. 

 The actual improvement that has result- 

 ed is most marked, though the process 

 has been only continued for a few years. 

 Bales of cotton from two varieties of 

 tellapattti were sent to the Mills the year 

 before last, and the report on them 

 stated that the samples were very good 

 with strong staple and spun well. 

 " Both samples are superior to the ordin- 

 ary cotton we are receiving from our 

 press, owing to their being of one 



variety of cotton." Last year they said 

 that the lint was a great improvement 

 on the lint from the country cotton and 

 was more valuable than the lint grown 

 in the previous year. 



In an exactly similar way the paddy 

 crop can be improved by picking the 

 seed only from the best heads to use 

 for sowing next year. In places so far 

 apart as Tinnevelly, Malabar and Goda- 

 vari, an improvement has been seen at 

 once, by giving the plants when trans- 

 planted in the field more room, so that 

 they can develop their side shoots more 

 freely. By picking every year seed from 

 the plants which have the most side 

 shoots this property is increased, so that 

 the crop may be transplanted singly, that 

 is, one seedling in each hole, with the 

 certainty of a great saving in seed and 

 the probability of a heavier crop. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE POSITION OF THE VILLAGE 

 FARMER. 



By Dr. J. C. Willis. 



[Paper read before the Board of 

 Agriculture on the 6th April, 1910,] 



In this paper I propose especially to 

 preach upon a variation of what I have 

 for many years made my text in dealing 

 with Ceylon agriculture. 



The ordinary villager, who after all is 

 the backbone of native agriculture in 

 the country, is in general in debt to the 

 money lender, from whom he borrows 

 at 50 % interest. It therefore follows 

 that if an improvement in agriculture 

 costs money to initiate — and in the vast 

 majority of cases it does— there must 

 be a guaranteed profit of over 50% to 

 make it worth while to borrow the 

 money to initiate that improvement. 



Now it is rarely that one can guarantee 

 any large profit on an improvement in 

 agriculture, and one may pretty safely 

 say that never can one guarantee 50 %. 

 It will therefore not pay to borrow 

 money to try it. 



Not only so, but to borrow more 

 money, the man must have more security 

 to deposit, and this is exactly what in 

 the majority of cases he has not got. 



Non-thinking people may remark that 

 under these circumstances one should 

 introduce improvements that do not 

 cost anything. It scaicely needs point- 

 ing out that such improvements are 

 very rarely found. Take the case of 



transplanting rice : it looks at first as 

 if it cost nothing, but it does in reality 

 cost a lot in increased labour, and the 

 only way it might be brought in at 

 present, in many cases, would be to 

 reduce the cultivated area, which is 

 not desirable Any improvement that 

 really costs nothing would be adopted at 

 once without much serious difficulty, 

 once it was proved to the satisfaction 

 of the villager that it ivas an improve- 

 ment. 



Now it is just at this point that much 

 amateur work for the improvement of 

 agriculture breaks down. Gainful and 

 detailed previous experiment is required 

 to make sure that the proposed change 

 is an improvement. Then careful com- 

 parison must be made at the same time 

 with the old method, to get at an exact 

 and detailed statement of the relative 

 cost of the two methods, and enquiry 

 must be made as to whether the new 

 method will cause any increased liabi- 

 lity to disease, or any violent change in 

 long-established custom; and many 

 other things. 



Having decided, after such work, that 

 the new method is an improvement, one 

 has then the hardest part of the work 

 to follow, to introduce it. This can only 

 be done, so far as the villager is concern- 

 ed, by actual demonstration on the 

 spot. It is for this reason, among 

 others, that the school gardens have 

 been so successful. To make a success 

 with other improvements, one must 

 demonstrate them on the spot, and here 

 is where village experimental gardens, 

 kept up by local societies, come in. 



