2 



[January, 1909. 



year. If the Ceylon villager is not to 

 sink to the position of a hewer of wood 

 and drawer of water, he must be helped 

 to get financially upon his legs, and the 

 new Government departure of loans to 

 the agriculturists will be watched with 

 great interest. How best to give 

 security for the money will be one of 

 the problems. It has been suggested 

 that headmen, who are commonly men 

 of more or less substance, should give 

 the security, and lend to their villagers 

 in cases where they feel that is safe. 

 But so many villagers merely lease the 

 land on which they work that there 

 may be difficulty about the security. 



As Government is now going to attend 

 to the money question with regard to 

 paddy cultivation, we would recommend 

 that the efforts of local societies be di- 

 rected to other crops, to their establish- 

 ment, their cultivation, tillage, and man- 

 uring, and their sale in the best market. 

 For all these ends money is necessary. 



There is an enormous difference 

 between the agriculture of planters' 

 estates, whether European or native, 

 and that of the villager— the former 



getting a larger return at less cost. But 

 it must not be supposed that this is all 

 due to the superior Education or training 

 of the former ; rather it is largely, at 

 any rate, to be attributed to the fact 

 that he has capital at his back. 



It may be well to remark that there 

 are other preliminaries to agriculture, 

 conspicuous among the^n being trans- 

 port, and it will be idle to expect much 

 progress in a village unprovided with 

 roads. Here the most that can at 

 present be hoped for is that the villager 

 should get free of the incubus of 

 debt. 



Education, again, is very important. 

 Travelling about the country, and 

 noting the signs of agricultural pro- 

 gress, new crops, &c, and enquiring 

 about them, we have very commonly 

 found that they owe their origin to the 

 local school garden, and are often, in 

 fact, cultivated by a boy being educated 

 at the school. 



Tillage is a thing as yet mainly prac- 

 tised in paddy-fields, but nothing can be 

 done in the way of improvement with 

 out money for a start. 



