37 
Part III.] Raitt : Bamboo as Material for Paper-pulp. 
at or near the source of supply and the 50 to 60 per cent, of waste there 
got rid of. With the industry thus divided into pulp-making and paper- 
making proper, the future expansion of the latter is assured, and the 
extraordinary anomaly of a country teeming with raw materials and 
having good natural facilities for manufacturing them, and yet unable 
not only to supply its own demand for the manufactured article, but 
actually having to import partially manufactured material with which to 
produce the small amount that it does make, will cease. Besides the 
present local demand and the large expansion of it which may be expected 
as soon as our paper mills are in a position to undertake it, there is a rapid¬ 
ly growing market in China and Japan which may be tapped, and which 
is represented by a present annual import of 30,000 tons of European 
wood pulp, and on which there is, to pulp manufactured in India, what 
amounts to practically a bonus of Rs. 15 per ton in difference of freights. 
Further, in view of the admitted increasing scarcity of Spruce wood and 
the gradually increasing cost of wood pulp it does not appear to be beyond 
the bounds of possibility to see an export trade to Europe develope. The 
prima facie grounds for such a prospect are, firstly, the cost of raw wood 
to produce 1 ton of pulp, wdiich now amounts to from £3-0-0 to £4-10-0 
and may be expected to increase, against wdiich we have bamboo costing 
from 15 shillings per ton of pulp in Malabar to £1-16-8 at Rangoon, 
which figures are 25 per cent, in advance of present estimated costs : 
secondly, the fact that, owing to the rapid natural reproduction of bam¬ 
boo, a mill will have a supply in perpetuum at its own doors, whereas in 
the case of wood pulp, a mill which may originally have had its supplies 
close at hand is compelled every year to go further back into the forests 
for them at an ever-increasing cost for transport, a cost which in from 
ten to twenty years becomes prohibitive and compels the factory either 
to shut down or to be removed to a fresh site. 
49. In conclusion I have to gratefully acknowledge the advice and 
assistance I have had in the preparation of this report in its economic 
aspects from the Forest Economist, R. S. Pearson, Esq., and upon the 
botanical questions involved from the Forest Botanist, R. S. Hole, Esq., 
and in the determination of specific gravities and the checking of esti¬ 
mations and results from the Forest Chemist, Mr. Puran Singh, F.C.S. 
t 217 ] 
