and Magasine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society, 



611 



RUBBER IN SOUTH COORG. 



RULES FOB GRANTING ABANDONED COFFEE LANDS ; 

 FBOM DECEMBER NEXT. 



Pollibetta, May 25.— The Cearas are making 

 good growth after the early rains. Holing for 

 planting out Para with the setting in of the 

 monsoon has been commenced. Some early 

 planting out of Coara has beon attended with 

 success. 



The following is the revised draft of Rules un- 

 der which abandoned coffee lands will be granted 

 for rubber cultivation up to the 1st December, 

 1908. The draft will be taken into consideration 

 after the 25th May, 1908 :— 



(I) Laud shall be bought at an 



UPSET PRICE OF E2-3 AN ACRE. 



(II) Land shall be free of assessment for eight years. 

 Thereafter the rate of assessment shall be R2 an acre, 

 and this rate shall be subject to revision at the end of 30 

 years. 



1,000-ACRE OPTIONS. 



(in) A grantee may be given the option of taking up 

 more land adjoining his original grant up to a total limit 

 of 1,000 acres, provided that the total area taken up is in 

 a compact block. This option need not be exercised for the 

 whole area at once, but not loss than 1' acres shall be 

 applied for at a time, and the option shall lapse over any 

 portion of the area not taken up within the number of 

 years represented by the number of hundred acres in the 

 whole area claimed. 



(IV) If the land applied for adjoins a perennial stream, 

 river or public road, and it is not considered necessary 

 to reserve the whole land, a 



BELT SHALL BE RESERVED ON EITHER SIDE 



of the stream, river or road of such a width not ex- 

 ceeding 50 yards as may ba considered necessary in each 

 case. 



(v) To allow proper facilities for clearing the land with- 

 out depriving the Government of the value Df the timber 

 in it, the applicant shall, after a land is made over to him 

 for rubber cultivation, give notice to the Forest Depart- 

 ment in the month of September of each year of the ex- 

 lent and situation of the area that he intends to clear 

 and plant in the succeeding year. The Forest Department 

 will arrange to cut and remove within six months of the re- 

 ceipt of the notice all timber on the area likely to 

 be cleared by him. Each succeeding year a similar notice 

 shall be given of the area intended to be operated on in the 

 year following to enable the 



FOREST DEPARTMENT TO REMOVE TIMBER ON 

 SUCH AREA. 



(vi) The Forest Department will not enforce its claims 

 to any timber (other than sandal) remaining uncut after 

 tbeexpiry of the psriod of six months from the receipt of 

 notice in each year, nn tha area in regard to which notice 

 has been given by the applicant. The applicant will be 

 free to cut such trees (other than sandal; antjjto appro- 

 priate or sell the timber. 



(vil) In the case of thetirst grant, if the grantee wishes to 

 begin planting at once and considers that it will hamper his 

 operations to wait for six months until the Forest 

 Department have removed the m reserved trees, it 

 shall be open to him to request that Department to 

 MARK WITHIN TWO MONTHS THE TREES 



they wish reserved on an area not exceeding Mo acies, 

 and to cut them himself,! leaving the Forest Department 

 to remove them subsequently, provided that this period of 

 two months is between the 1st December and the Ut May. 



f VIII) After the upset price of R2-3-0 an acre shall have 

 been recovered a title deed in the form annexed to these 

 rules will be issued. This title deed will also cover those 

 parts of the land which may be taken up subsequently in 

 exercise of the option referred to in rule (iiil provided the 

 conditions specified in the schedule to the title deed so far 

 as the same respectively relate to or affect such subse- 

 quent grants are satisfied, Until receipt of the title deed 

 no grantee will have the power of alienating any portion 

 of the land granted. Alienations made in contravention 

 of these rules will render the grant liable to be withdrawn. 



These Rules appaar to confurm to the Rules 

 of the Mysore Government for the grant of 

 lands for rubber cultivation in that State in so 

 far as they insist on a belt of forest being left 



uncleared on both sides of streams and rivers. 

 In the case of abandoned coffee lands these 

 plots will probably be overrun with Lantana, 

 of which the Government are making efforts 

 to rid the Province. 



Agave. 



Lands other than abandoned coffee lands will 

 be granted for agave cultivation under Rules 

 similar to those governing the grant of aban- 

 doned coffee lands for the cultivation of rubber, 

 except that the only condition that will be in- 

 sisted on in the selection of land is that it 

 should not be one which, for the protection of 

 springs or for the preservation of the hill sides 

 or other well marked natural features, or on 

 account of its containing valuable timber or 

 being evergreen forest, it is considered necessary 

 to reserve to Government. To enable this con- 

 dition to be enforced, all applications for land 

 should bo referred to the Deputy Conservator 

 of Forests for investigation and opinion before 

 grants are made. In these cases also belts will 

 be reserved on the sides of streams, rivers and 

 public roads. — M, Mail, May 29. 



SISAL HEMP 



Is receiving increasing attention among plan- 

 tors in India. The "Muir" Company reports 

 alone, are sufficient evidence of this; three of 

 the four^Oompanies are putting in the following 

 acreages in the product this year : — 



Kanan Dovan Hills Produce Co. ... 50 acres. 



Amalgamated Tea Estates Co. ... 100 



Consolidated Tea and Lands Co. ... 250 ,, 

 In this connection "One Interested" writes 

 to the Englishman an May 17th, asking for an 

 explanation of the extraordinary and unprece- 

 dented fall in home prices, said to have over 

 taken the market for Sisal hemp. This fibre for 

 some time past has fetched on the London mar- 

 ket about £28 a ton and over. From past ex- 

 perience £28 may fairly be regarded as some- 

 where near the average price of the commodity. 

 Without, it would seem, any gradual shrinkage 

 in value, the market in London, for some un- 

 accountable reason, is stated to have suddenly 

 dropped from £28 to £8 11-6 a ton— while a Syl- 

 het concern, it is said, failed in obtaining an 

 advance beyond a fraction over £7 a ton. Else- 

 where than in Yucatan and Florida, the cultiva- 

 tion of Sisal is a comparatively new industry. 

 Its expansion, being largely if not entirely 

 governed by climatic influences combined with 

 proximity to the sea, is necessarily confined to 

 well-ascertained areas ; and as it takes from four 

 to five years before the plant comes into full 

 bearing, sudden and violent fluctuations, such 

 for example as the London market is now ex- 

 periencing, seem almost beyond the bounds of 

 possibility. 



MOLASSES 



A by-product in sugar-making which planters 

 in Java looked upon as being almost worthless, 

 and which they often pitched into the nearest 

 river to get rid of it, has suddenly been found 

 to possess market value, It is now bought up 

 eagerly in Java and exported to Calcutta, where 

 the article meets with a ready sale at a large 

 profit. — Straits Times, May 15. 



77 



