VERTEUIL — TRINIDAD AGRICULTURE. 
225 
To sum up. It appears to me that every effort must be 
made to maintain the sugar industry in Trinidad, until such 
time at least, as sound subsidiary products will have been esta- 
blished to replace it. What are. those products, and in what 
space of time will they be capable of answering the object for 
which they will be introduced 1 I confess, although the subject 
has had my consideration for several years, I feel discouraged 
at the difficulty. Cane-farming I am a strong advocate of, because 
it can assist the sugar industry most effectively, and because it 
will be the means of extending a useful peasantry, offering a 
guarantee of stability, as it will establish, in addition to cane, 
those minor products which we now import from Venezuela and 
the neighbouring islands. 
I fear it will be no easy task to prepare Agricultural Banks 
to assist in making advances on growing crops. It will be less 
difficult to start them with cane farmers when advances made 
to them will be endorsed by the factories reaping their canes, 
thus giving full security to the Bank and facilitating its work. 
Although cacao appears destined to take the leading part 
in the agriculture of the island, it is not probable, indeed it is 
not desirable, that it should have that preponderance over other 
exports that sugar had in the past. 
I admit lam haunted by overproduction, and my alarm 
has some reason, for in 1871 with an acreage o ,o ’ 
exported cacao estimated to be worth £120,000, whereas in 
we exported from 94,500 acres a value of only £452, OOO . l am 
aware that a certain proportion of that increased acreage consis s 
of trees not yet bearing, and of trees just beginning to bear, still 
the fall in prices of the last two years points that we must not 
trust any more in values of the past. We can ace ie rl /* 
over production only if we obtain a larger yie 1 on ^ ? ur . * 
but not if it is caused by an unchecked increase of cultivation. 
We must arm ourselves with agricultural education torowb 
further depreciation in value. It is a question winch has the 
attention of the Agricultural Society, and we no Povernor 
find a powerful and trusty ally in His Excellency the Governor. 
A committee of the society has been 
the best method of teaching the elements o a » ' forth- 
p rim ary schools, and I have no doubt assistance will b^tort^ 
coming from the Laboratory and the Botanic . . 
persons of the active and capable heads of these institutions. 
