March 1907.] 



155 



Mdible Products, 



these two Colonies exported the one to the value of £121,329, the other to £92,605 ; 

 and the trade became the most important one of this part of Africa, and continues 

 to be so. Angola entered into competition with Gambia but heavy taxation checked 

 and partly destroyed the Angolan trade Monterio, op. cit., i,, p. 13 and Ficalho, 

 op. cit., p. 139). 



The Indian trade, owing to the length of the journey round the Cape took 

 no great dimensions until after the openirg of the S uez Canal in 1869. Then came 

 a rapid development, Pondicherry being the chief centre. Indigo had been a leading 

 coucern of this French settlement, but the natives who dealt in it suddenly 

 discovered that Arachis offered a better market, and for a time the trade taxed the 

 capabilities of the port to the uttermost. In 1883 the demand for storage space was 

 so great that every available dwelling-house was rented by the merchants. In 1886 

 three special " nut " trains had to be run daily for some time from Panruti in the 

 chief producing district to Pondicherry, while Pondicherry, Panruti and the 

 surrounding villages remained full of them {Tropical Agriculturist, i p. 12 ; vi., p. 31). 

 In 1891 space was totally inadequate to meet the incaeased traffic, despite the use of 

 "twelve new export sheds and ten large naval coal go-downs" {Tropical Agri- 

 culturist, x., p. 867.) 



About three-quarters of the nuts exported from Pondicherry were grown 

 in the British territory adjacent to the French settlement. Nuts likewise found 

 an outlet through Madras, and those produced in the Bombay Presidency through 

 Bombay. 



Statistics are available of the exports from British India, but not from Pondi- 

 cherry ; under these circumstances it is hardly useful to give them. As a substitute 

 a table is offered of the acreage under the crop for the years from 1882 to 1898 in the 

 Madras Presidency ; it shows the increase to the climax in 1890 and the subsequent 

 fall. The figures are taken from Subba Rao's paper quoted before, and from the 

 Revenue Report on the crop in Madras (G.O., Nos. 773.773A, p. 7). 



Acreage Under Ground-Nuts in the Madras Presidency. 



Year. 



Acres, 



Year. 



Acres. 



1882-83 



73,568 



1890-91 



258,313 



1883-81 



98,536 



1891-92 



201,344 



1884-85 



145,976 



1892-93 



226,905 



1885-86 



161,607 



1893-94 



247,796 



1886-87 



153,013 



1894-95 



226,147 



1887-88 



141,507 



1895-96 



243.350 



1888-89 



211,890 



1896-97 



157,234 



1889-90 



279,355 



1897-98 



83,715 



The fall in interest subsequent to 1890 is not peculiar to Madras, it is observed, 

 too, in the Bombay Presidency, and the French Chamber of Comerce at Pondicherry 

 has recognised the necessity of investigating the cause, while the decreased imports 

 to Marseilles have caused concern there. 



As most of the nuts sent to Europe from India are decorticated first and 

 those from Africa are sent undecorticated, we can recognise the effect in the follow- 

 ing table of Marseilles imports. In the third column the total imports are calculated 

 as kernels, i.e., 23 per cent, of the weight of undecorticated nuts is deducted for the 

 shell. The basis of the table is one in the Comptes Rendus de la Chambre de Commerce 

 de Marseille, 1897 and 1898, and the proportion of kernel to husk is based on 

 figures given by Uhlitzsch (i.e., p. 388). Simmonds {Tropical Agriculture London 

 1887, p. 402, only allows to the husk 1 per cent of the total weight, an impossibly smal 



