54 
fact that indigo cultivation and manufacture will yield as a by- 
product one of the most valuable of natural manures is one pregnant 
with the greatest possibility for this Colony. 
We know from the experience gained in India and Java that 
this manurial matter trebles the outurn of tobacco; that it doubles 
the outurn of paddj', in grain as well as in straw; and it will also 
be found very suitable for coconut cultivation, for cacao, and for tea. 
The manure, consisting of the fermented green leaves and stalks, 
is put into heaps and kept in pits, and can be further improved 
in value by running the waste liquid after fermentation over it. The 
bacterial life, set going by the fermentation, helps to decompose the 
plant, and turns the whole mass into a brown friable mould. Sir 
George Watt, in his Dictionary of the Economic Products of India , 
specially refers to the great value of this manure, and you will find 
the fact mentioned there that experience has shown that land cutlti- 
vated in indigo is greatly benefited thereby. 
Indigo is one of the few plants which enrich the soil on which it 
is grown, (I) by the exudation into the soil of nitrogenous matter 
from peculiar root-nodules in which through bacterial action the 
inert nitrogen of the air is worked up into assimilable nitrogenous 
products ; (2) by the fall oflleaf; and (3) by the droppings of the 
millions of insect life which an Indigo field harbours, while the long 
tap roots of the plant draw nourishment from strata of soil not 
reached by ordinary crops. 
This Indigo refuse is called “ seet,” and closely approximates in 
Its general composition good English Farmyard manure, though it 
is decidedly richer in its chief constituent — nitrogen. From IOO 
maunds of green plant about 80 maunds, or about 3 tons, of well-rotted 
“seet ’’are obtained. Mr. Pawson, from whose report to the Behar 
Planters’ Association, pages q-I2, I quote, says that without taking 
into consideration the very valuable manurial qualities of the decom- 
posed organic matter in the “seet,” its principal plant food consti- 
tuents per ton would be equivalent to 103 lb. sulphate of ammonia, 
36 lb., sulphate of potash and 13 lbs., tribasic phosphate of lime. 
Compared with oil cake, which contains only 14 per cent, of mois- 
ture, while “seet” contains 70 per cent., one ton of “seet” is 
equivalent in manurial value to about 5 cwt, °f castor cake. The 
actual results are, however, even greater in the case of “seet,” as 
the plant food there is in a ' more assimilable and subdivided form 
than in either farmyard manure or oil cake. Composition of Indigo 
refuse or “ seet ”: — 
Per cent 
Water ... 72 ‘56 
Organic matter ... 22'88 
Mineral matter ... 4‘56t 
100*00 
