Miscellaneous. 



534 



[December, 1909. 



Die Olpalme am Kamerunberge. Tro- 

 penpfl. Dec. 1908, p, 583. 



The African Oil Palm and its Pro- 

 ducts. Agric. News. Nov. 1908, 

 p. 373. 



Le palmier a huile en Af rique occi- 

 dentale francaise. Bull. Jard. Col., 

 Nov. 1908, p, 380. 



Do. do, L' Agr. praet. despays chaud 

 Oct. 1908, 



Do. do. continued, Dec. 1908, p. 466. 

 Do. do. continued, Jan. 1909, p. 35. 



Do. do. continued, Feb. 1909, p. 127. 



March 1909, p. 219. May 1909, p. 398. 

 The African oil palm and its products. 



Ag. News. Nov. 1908. " T.A," May 



1909, p. 418. 

 Varietaten der West africanischen 



Olpalme, Tropenflanzer, July 1909, 



p. 342. 



Die Olpalme, Beihefte z. tropenflan- 

 zer. 6, Oct. 1909. 



Eucalyptus : — 



Eucalyptus trees ; economic vises. Ind. 



Forester, April 1908, p. 197. 

 Mallet bark as a Tanning Material. 



Imp. Inst. Bull. 6, 1908, p. 318. 



THE VALUE OF INDIAN CROPS. 



(From the Indian Trade Journal, Vol. 

 XIV., No, 176, August 12, 1909.) 



It is in any country hard to ascertain 

 exactly the area under the several crops 

 and harder to estimate the total outturn 

 to be derived from each. But a com- 

 putation of the monetary value of such 

 produce is a still more difficult matter. 

 It may be possible in a small country, 

 the division of whose cultivated areas 

 is ascertainable Avith certainty, whose 

 climatic conditions are so uniform that 

 all the crops are reaped within a period 

 of a few months, and in which the 

 range of prices is narrow and accur- 

 ately recorded. But in large tracts 

 where these conditions do not exist, 

 where the areas under the several crops 

 are vast and uncertain, where the crops 

 are reaped at widely different seasons, 

 and where prices for all descriptions of 

 produce are not adequately recorded 

 on a uniform system, the work becomes 

 so conjectural as to have small value 

 of an absolute kind. 



Even in the United States, where 

 there is a large and intelligent body of 

 private persons, farmers and others, 

 who co-operate with the Department 

 of Agriculture in reporting the various 

 data required, and whose interests are 



in the main concerned in their accurate 

 record, the wide range of crop seasons 

 and of farm values suggests doubts as 

 to the intrinsic usefulness of the pub- 

 lished estimates of total value of the 

 agricultural produce obtained. 



In India such an estimate is not feasi- 

 ble, even if it were considered that it 

 would be instructive. It is not at all 

 certain that the returns of cultivated 

 areas and of the principal crops are less 

 accurate in India thau in other countries ; 

 but there are a number of minor crops 

 recorded under generic headings, and 

 whose varieties, though they may have 

 money values substantially different, 

 are not distinguished in the statistics. 

 In respect of others no estimate of out- 

 turn is attempted, while the mere areas 

 under a further class of crops are lumped 

 together. Moreover, there are at least 

 two distinct harvest seasons in India : 

 for monsoon crops and for cold weather 

 crops respectively ; and in the several 

 tracts the incidence of the monsoon and 

 of the hot weather that occasions the 

 ripening of winter crops varies so greatly 

 in point of time that a further dfficulty 

 arises. The conventional year adopted 

 in India for purposes statistical and 

 dependent on statistics runs from 

 April to March. It was adopted in 

 order that it should include the sea- 

 sons at which the summer and winter 

 crops dependent on the rains of a given 

 year are reaped. But it does not do 

 so altogether In some cases the har- 

 vesting of that portion of a given crop 

 which is grown in Northern India is 

 not begun before the end of the statis- 

 tical year in which the more southerly 

 portion of tne same crop has been 

 garnered and in part exported. All in- 

 fluences tend to shipment of produce 

 as soon as it becomes available ; so that 

 the appearance of a commodity in the 

 export movement may, in the absence 

 of any other index, be accepted as 

 defining roughly the time when it comes 

 on the market. Wheat may be cited 

 as an example. Iu the northern Punjab 

 this crop is not cut before the end of 

 April or beginning of May ; but in 

 Bombay and the Central Provinces 

 reaping is begun in March, or even 

 February, and in a favourable year con- 

 siderable shipments might go forward 

 before the end of March. But most 

 of the exports are made in the subse- 

 quent statistical year. This to a much 

 less extent holds good of oilseeds. In 

 the case of cotton the heaviest shipments 

 are made in the end of the statistical 

 year in which the crop is produced, 

 although large quantities remain for ex- 

 portation in later months, It is therefore 



