November, 1911.] 



393 



Edible Products. 



and forming one of the very finest of 

 materials for writing and printing, and 

 of exceptional value for engraving." 



Commenting on Mr. Vincent's article, 

 the editor of American Forestry notes 

 that the proposal to use bamboo for 

 paper is an incident of the search for 

 pulp-material to meet the great and 

 growing demand. He says :— 



"The increasing scarcity and cost of 

 spruce has already led to successful 

 experiments with other woods, formerly 

 disregarded, but experimenters are con- 

 tinually looking for material which can 



be grown more rapidly than trees. The 

 foregoing article suggests a possible pro- 

 mising source of supply, but it must be 

 remembered that bamboo is a tropical 

 product, and that our mills, representing 

 au enormous investment, are in the 

 North. The utilization of bamboo on a 

 large commercial scale would involve 

 a considerable readjustment of the pulp 

 industry, and the solving of many 

 questions, among which that of labour 

 would not be the least. It can, there- 

 fore, hardly be regarded as a possibility 

 of the immediate future, although well 

 worth consideration in connection with 

 an ultimate supply," 



EDIBLE PRODUCTS. 



PADDY CULTIVATION IN CEYLON 

 DURING THE XIXTH CENTURY. 



By E. Elliott. 

 (Continued from page SIS.) 



Statistics and their Compilation. 



The statements of production of 

 Paddy I have so far given, have, in the 

 absence of reliable statistics, been neces- 

 sarily deduced from the only trust- 

 worthy data available, viz., the sums 

 received annually by Government for its 

 share of the crops. But as I now pur- 

 pose basing my conclusions ou more 

 exact statistics, both of acreage and 

 production, I will explain how and 

 where I got my figures, and my reasons 

 for thinking they are substantially accur- 

 ate and reliable. 



The Government Blue Book Agricul- 

 tural Returns, as printed and published, 

 have unfortunately not been free from 



Ealpable errors, and consequently they 

 ave been rather indiscriminately con- 

 demned as untrustworthy. This, I have 

 always felt, was too sweeping, and I was 

 sure that, as recently expressed by Mr. 

 Booth, Government Agent, Western 

 Province, " the returns as compiled by 

 the Headmen though not absolutely 

 accurate, were for the most part 

 probably near the mark." I was further 

 of opinion that the absurd figures 

 which occasionally disfigured the pub- 

 lished returns were most probably 

 attributable to the carelessness of the 

 subsequent clerical compilers in the 

 Kachcheries, and possibly to printer's 

 errors, to which undue prominence has 

 been given. 



50 



Accordingly, some yeai'3 ago, while in 

 Ceylon, I had the Blue Book figures for 

 the acreage and production ot Paddy in 

 each district for the twenty-six years, 

 1866 to 1892, copied on to two big sheets. 

 I was thus able at a glance to compare 

 the figures over the whole period for each 

 and ' spot ' any extraordinary figures, 

 and refer to the various Kachcheries for 

 explanation. Curiously enough, I found, 

 I think, only one serious error as regards 

 acreage, where the number of bushels 

 sowing extent in the North- Western 

 Province, as returned by the Headmen, 

 was given instead of the equivalent 

 number of acres it was the Kachcheri 

 Clerk's duty to have inserted. But the 

 mistakes as regards production were 

 numerous and varied, but easily dis- 

 covered, as the very next column of the 

 Blue Book returns gives the rate of 

 production. 



This careful scrutiny confirmed the 

 favourable opinion already expressed ; 

 and during a recent visit to London 

 I have personally taken out the details, 

 district by district, from the Blue Books 

 for another sixteen years between 

 1893 and 1910. These appear to have 

 been more carefully compiled, but not 

 to be altogether free from some pal- 

 pable errors, attributable to clerks or 

 printers.* 



Thus, figures for Batticaloa crop in 

 1901, off some 87,000 acres, was printed 



* Thus the addition or omission of a single 

 cypher in some of the details made a 

 difference of three millions in the aggregate 

 crops of 1882 and 1885, which have long toured 

 as the maximum and minimum of the decade, 

 and must in future appear as eight millions odd 

 in each year. A similar palpable mistake in 

 the details of the Northern Province for 1888 

 justified the elision of nearly a million bushels. 



