and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society. —January, 1913. 



11 



" No-one is going to use rubber for new uses," 

 pointed out Dr. Willis, " until they can be cer- 

 tain they can get it at a decent price. Let it 

 stay, say at 4s., instead of careering up 

 and down the scale, and people will begin to 

 use it and the demand will be increased. If 

 the demand does not go up, the amount planted 

 will cause a moat awful over production. There 

 are 1,000,000 acres of rubber novv in the eastern 

 tropics. Supposing you got only a hundred- 

 weight to the acre, that is 50,000 tons, and the 

 South American supply is 30.000 tons, that is 

 80,000, and a hundredweight is an absurd esti- 

 mate. Three hundredweight is much more 

 reasonable, and that makes 150,000 tons in the 

 East alone, getting on for treble the present 

 consumption." 



Pests. 



Speaking with regard to the question of pests, 

 Dr. Willis said they had not yet met any winch 

 attacked rubber, and in these days he did not 

 think there was anything to be feared from 

 pests, as. for instance, in the case of coffee. If a 

 man got a single stray poochi running about 

 his estate he sent it to Peradeniya to be 

 examined. People were much too afraid about 

 diseases to let them spread. He did not 

 think they would ever again get diseases to 

 exterminate a product, as coffee was exterm- 

 inated, but they would have to reckon with 

 diseases, like people did with the cocoi canker. 

 On cocoa estates now, in every estimate so 

 much per annum was allowed to keep down 

 cocoa canker, and the same thing should be 

 done with regard to rubber, as well as tea. To 

 allow a certain percentage to keep down diseas- 

 es was undoubtedly a safe plan. 



School Gardens. 



A work in which Dr. Willis has been greatly 

 interested is school gardens. 



"In 1900," he said, "I was on the committee 

 which reported on the old agricultural school in 

 Colombo, and recommended it to be closed. Mr 

 Burrows, then Director of Public Instruction, 

 and I, brought up a scheme for school gardens, 

 which was adopted, and has spread very much. 

 For many years we had a lot of difficulty, because 

 people said they did not send their children to 

 school to be coolies, they wanted book learning, 

 but now the fashion is going the other way and 

 parents are keen that the children should learn. 

 There is getting to be a strong feeling in the 

 Island that there ought to be a garden in every 

 school, if that were started it would mean an 

 enormous subordinate department of this es- 

 tablishment, because there are 2,500 schools in 

 the island. At present we have 284 gardens, 

 and that takes four superintendents." 



"I think, 1 ' continued Dr. Willis, enthusias- 

 tically, "that this is one of the few things that 

 we have been able to introduce that really has 

 produced an effect on native agriculture. With 

 the school gardens, we have brought into the 

 villages a lot of new products, and people are 

 beginning to realise that there are ways in 

 which you can cultivate which give as good re- 

 sults as the ways which they have been used to. 

 That is the first step towards getting them to 



change. They are all capable of improvement 

 if they have the money. Financial help is the 

 greatest benefit that has ever been given to 

 native agriculture. I began agitating at the 

 first meetiug of the Agricultural Society for 

 financial help to the poorer cultivators, to get 

 them out of the clutches of the moneylenders, 

 and I have never ceased to agitate on that sub- 

 ject. It has gone so far that an ordinance was 

 passed last year authorising the establishment 

 of co-operative credit societies. It now remains 

 to put that ordinance into the hands of a cap- 

 able official who should go about the 

 country and get the villagers to -join such socie- 

 ties, otherwise the ordinance will remain a 

 dead letter. These co operative societies have 

 been wonderful successes in Bengal, the Punjab, 

 and other places in India, a,r,d there is no reason 

 to doubt that, properly attended to, they will 

 be an equal success here.'' 



The Goiya. 



" What is your opinion of the goiya P" 



"The goiya? He is a rigidly conservative 

 person. People think it is simply obstinacy, 

 but it is not anything of the kind. Tempera- 

 mentally he is more conservative than the white 

 man, but, atter all, there is not so much differ- 

 ence between him and the small farmer in 

 Europe. He cannot afford to try. For instance, 

 in the transplantation of paddy, he has to spend 

 money, and it is generally a question of ' has he 

 the money to spend?' In any new thing he 

 tries, however carefully you may demonstrate 

 that it is always, or nearly always, a success, 

 anything new is an experiment for him. He is 

 taking a risk, he has to risk money, and as a 

 rule he has not the money to risk. He knows 

 the old methods will give a certain result, and 

 therefore he will stick to them, unless he has 

 very good reasons indeed for changing, and 

 unless he can borrow money at a reason- 

 able cost. If he has a co-operative credit 

 society he can borrow at 12£ per cent., and 

 there is a reasonable chance that an im- 

 provement of his methods would pay 12-J 

 per cent. At present, he has to borrow 

 at 50 per cent, and unless the change is going 

 to give him 50 percent, improvement it is not 

 going to pay him to try it. You may safely say 

 that no agricultural improvement in general 

 ever pays 5 J per cent. All these things go back 

 to the keys of progress, which are transpor- 

 tation and linance. It always comes back to 

 that. The scientific improvement of agriculture 

 is a secondary matter." 



" What's your opinion of transportation in 

 Ceylon ? " 



" From the point of view of the goiya I think 

 transportation is pretty good in Ceylon. All 

 the villager wauts is roads, and he has them. 

 Ceylon is about as well equipped with roads 

 as any tropical country in existence. The one 

 thing lacking in the agricultural equipment of 

 the villager is finance." 



Rubber Tree Measurements. 



" Can you give us any of the figures resulting 

 from your observations with regard to the 

 growth and measurements of rubber trees ?*' 



