100 



Tea followed. The Botanic Gardens were not the sole introducers of tea. 

 though they had it very early, and Lear, an early Superintendent, planted ten 

 in Nuwara Eliya in 1837. The rise of the industry dates from the commission 

 to Assam, which was provided with questions by Dr. Thwaites. 



Liberian coffee had a small ' run,' but has never been much of a success 

 in Ceylon. Ceara rubber was tried in the early eighties, but did not yield well 

 enough, and was soon cut out to make room for tea. Vanilla came later, but 

 the artificial vanillin and overproduction have destroyed its profitableness ; and 

 now, last of all, comes rubber, especially Para, which was introduced by the 

 Royal Botanic Gardens in 1S70, and bids fair to have a " boom " of several years, 

 being perhaps the most profitable crop ever cultivated in the tropics, and one 

 with an enormous market. 



Now there is still, though it is dying out, a widespread impression that 

 this sort of thing will continue, and that Peradeniya is a kind of lucky bag 

 from which new products will emerge as the old ones are overdone. It is 

 necessary to state clearly once for all that the day of this kind of thing is over, and 

 that it is now far more important to improve, extend, and consolidate the industries 

 already existing in Ceylon, than to devote attention to the comparatively minor 

 chance of finding something to take their place if they fail. 



The great success of the various industries in Ceylon has been due to 

 the fact that they have had to meet only the competition of wild jungle stuff 

 (as in rubber and cinchona) or that of the tropical races of mankind (as in tea) 

 who are not up to date in methods and machinery. This is now all over, and 

 every thing of any value is now in the hands of Europeans, Americans or 

 Japanese, and a fierce competition will have to be met, in which Ceylon will be 

 handicapped by poor soil &c, but will have vast advantages in other directions. 

 The victory will be to him who most intelligently applies the resources of science, 

 politics, &c, to aid him. 



Ceylon has now a very rich and varied list ol products and is not, like 

 Jamaica or Hawaii, almost entirely dependent on one, as she was in the coffee 

 days, when at one time coffee formed 95 % of the value of her exports. The 

 island cultivates, on a commercial scale, rice, tea, cacao, rubber, coconuts 

 citronella, palmyra palms, tobacco, cinnamon and cardamoms, besides smaller 

 quantities of nutmegs, cloves, kituls, coca, camphor, lemongrass, cassava, 

 annatto, sapanwood, vanilla, pepper, coffee, kola, sugar, fruits aud vegetables. 

 This is a magnificent and varied list, and our attention should be devoted to 

 improving these and extending their cultivation into new districts. Sugar is almost 

 the only tropical product of importance not seriously cultivated in Ceylon 

 (though there is a little), but our soil and elevations are nnsuited to it, and it 

 grows well in Java, Hawaii and Cuba. 



So far, then, as Ceylon is concerned, the idea to be understood in the 

 term " new product " requires great extension. We have now got, in general, 

 to find products which are absolutely new, to find uses for these products, and 

 to create a market for them. Obviously this is a task of far greater difficulty 

 than merely introducing such a plant as cacao or rubber. Thus, for example, 

 at the present time, it has been suggested that we should use our Mana-grass 

 (Andropogon Nardxis) as a source of paper, for which purpose it has never 

 hitherto been used. We have then to show that this grass will give a good 

 paper, that it can be laid upon the European market in vast quantity, and as 

 cheaply as any existing source of paper, and that this rate will remunerate 

 those who collect it in Ceylon. To get favourable answers to all these questions 

 is evidently much more easily said than done, yet all must be so answered 

 before we have "got" the new product. 



