198 



Notices. 



[No. 84, 



XI.— NOTICES. 



On the Prices of Indian Gravis. 



Prices of the Cerealia and other Edibles of India and England com- 

 pared. By Colonel Sykes, Vice-President of the Royal Society, Read 

 at the Meeting of the British Association on the 29th June, 1847. 

 The author's chief object was to show that India, in cases of dearth 

 in England, could be looked to with confidence for a supply of bread 

 stuffs — and India having the advantage of its principal crops ripen- 

 ing in January and February, the moment a failure of the crop should 

 be known in England in August, orders for supplies from the follow- 

 ing January crops of India could be sent, and the supplies landed 

 in England, even by the route of the Cape of Good Hope, two or three 

 months before the ripening of the crops in England. Colonel Sykes 

 furnished averaged prices for years from various parts of India ; but 

 he enumerates very many grains, cheap, nutritive, and in general 

 consumption, which do not appear in the price lists, and whose 

 names even are unknown in Europe, except to the learned. The first 

 price list gives an average from 1827 to 1845, at seven markets in 

 the Deccan, under the Bombay Presidency. The ultimate result is 

 shown in the following table. 





Avoirdupois 



weight of 

 Grain for 2 5. 



Price per quar- 

 ter English. 





tbs. 



oz. 



s. d. 



Wheat, 



64 



5 



14 11 



Rice, 



36 



13 



■^Tjd. per lb. 



Grain, 



60 



5 



15 11 



Bajra, 



82 



10 



11 7 



Jowaree, 



100 



8 



9 6 



Now these 100 lbs. weight of jowaree for two shillings, are suffi- 

 cient for the support of a man for two months at the least. But in 

 1828 and 1843, at the market of Kullus, the average price of jowa- 

 ree was 204 lbs. for two shillings, or more than 21bs. for a farthing ; 

 so that in those years a man could live for less than a farthing per 

 diem for meat. Colonel Sykes gives various other tables of prices at 

 fifty-three military stations in Bengal, in Goojost, &c.— particularly 



