September, 1909.] 



211 



Fibres, 



men who had been trained on the 

 Koilpatty Agricultural Station, and who 

 only knew that particular class of soil. 

 Therefore, it was decided tc bring down 

 men who had been used, all their lives, 

 to these implements from the Bellary 

 District. Accordingly, some twenty-six 

 sets of implements were made during the 

 hot weather months, ready to be lent 

 out to ryots, and six Bellary men weie 

 sent down at the beginning ot September 

 (six weeks before the sowing season). 

 Five of these only reached their des- 

 tination ; one being afraid to go so tar 

 from his native country, let t the train 

 at the next station after its departure 

 and went back home. These men were 

 purposely brought down early in the 

 season, so that they could become accus- 

 tomed to the South Country bullocks 

 and could train the other coolies 

 employed in the Agricultural Station. 

 It proved afterward that it was well 

 that this precaution had beeu taken, for 

 these men were, with one exception, 

 only of use in training the local farm 

 coolies under the supervision of the 

 farm staff. They proved to be just as 

 conservative, in their own way, as the 

 ryots, whom they had been intended to 

 teach. They were unable to handle or 

 drive the bullocks which were unused to 

 the noises made by them when driving. 

 In fact, several ryots refused to let 

 these men continue working, as they 

 could not drive a straight furrow and 

 preferred the newly-trained local coolie 

 who was used to their local cattle. 

 This was not the only objection to these 

 Bellary men, They knew no Tamil, and 

 their language was a mixture of Telugu 

 and Canarese, so that they could only 

 make themselves understood in the 

 Telugu villages. Also their different 

 customs and unthrifty habits at once 

 prejudiced the Tinnevelly ryots against 

 them. 



During the first year of the introduc- 

 tion of these implements, the Manager 

 of the Agricultural Station selected the 

 adjoining Telugu village in which to 

 concentrate his efforts. The selection 

 was a good one. The Telugu, who is 

 comparatively a recent arrival in the 

 distiict, is not so bound down to custom 

 as the aboriginal Tamil, and it is easier 

 to get him to try improved methods. 

 The village mainly depends on its black 

 soil which was, on the whole, excellently 

 farmed land- Some sixty acres were 

 sown with the drill last season and some 

 excellent crops obtained. In one or two 

 other neighbouring Tamil villages, small 

 areas of 4 or 5 acres were sown. In one 

 case, the owner of the land quarrelled 

 with the whole of the rest of the village 

 for introducing something new, but 



they were appeased when they saw his 

 crop, and this season in the same village 

 more than seventy acres have been 

 sown with the drill- In the first year 

 about 200 acres were sown on ryots' 

 fields with the drill. 



In the year 1908-9, a similar allotment 

 was made for cotton improvement, and 

 it was decided to continue this work 

 as well as to introduce seed-farms for 

 growing pure Karangani cotton of the 

 strain selected on the Koilpatty Agri- 

 cultural Station. This gave an oppor- 

 tunity of spreading this system of culti- 

 tion further afield than Koilpatty, but 

 was a much more difficult matter to ar- 

 range, as in many parts of the district 

 the Department was unknown, and the 

 Agricultural Station at Koilpatty had 

 not been heard of. 



In order to cope with this work as 

 well as the extension, probably on the 

 success of the previous year's operations, 

 several new hands had to be trained. 

 This meant a very careful selection on 

 the part of the Manager at Koilpatty, 

 and many of the would-be sowing ex- 

 perts had to be got rid of after a trial. 

 Besides this, the Manager had to bear in 

 mind the villages in which the extension 

 would probably take place, and to train 

 either a man of that village or a man of 

 similar caste. The best men it was 

 found were petty ryots who owned land 

 in the village where they were to work. 

 They, as a matter of course, looked 

 after their own interest and sowed their 

 own lands first. This new introduction 

 naturally attracted much attention in 

 the village and gave others confidence in 

 the practice. When the sowing season 

 commenced, there were some twenty-two 

 trained coolies available. Their train- 

 ing was by no means complete, as they 

 had only been taught to sow in dry land, 

 at first with coarse sand, and afterwards 

 with boiled cotton seed. Thus, they had 

 never seen any ciops which had come up 

 with their sowing and had never sown 

 in a moist seed-bed. It was necessary, 

 therefore, for one of the staff to be 

 present at the commencement to see 

 that the work was started properly. 



The seed-farms were, however, the 

 main outside centres of the introduction 

 of this improvement. Five centres had 

 been selected in different parts of the 

 district, and to each of these trained 

 coolies were sent with a set of imple- 

 ments. My assistant, M. R. Ry. J. 

 Chelvaranga Raju, had charge of this 

 work and made the necessary arrange- 

 ments with the owners of the land. The 

 terms on which this was obtained were 

 as follows:— The land selected should 

 not have grown cotton the previous 



