Report of Society's Meetings. 41 
sacrificing the whole of their capital or abandoning their 
estates, and seeking fresh fields. But in this Colony the 
Planter's capital is invested in machinery, buildings, 
drainage and water supply schemes, sea defences, &c , 
and if sugar is abandoned the total capital so invested — 
and it is a very large sum — will be entirely lost. The 
coffee industry in Ceylon was ruined by natural causes, 
our main industry is being ruined by unfair trade condi- 
tions which the Mother Country can remedy. In Ceylon 
there is a teeming population, and cheap and regular 
labour can be depended on. Here any new industry is 
handicapped by the want of a reliable supply of labour 
and under existing conditions no fresh capital is likely 
to be attra6led to the Colony. There is one feature in 
conne6lion with the sugar industry I would like to see 
developed and that is the very important one of cane- 
farming. There is no crop so suited to our low lying 
alluvial lands as that of the sugar cane, and there is no 
crop that our peasantry could grow with greater advan- 
tage and benefit to themselves. On the estates of the 
Colonial Company an endeavour has been made to start 
cane-farming on the following lines : Land to be rented 
to the cane-farmers at the merely nominal rent of one 
dollar per acre per annum. Canes to be purchased per 
punt, or juice per gallon, according to the following scale 
of prices : with sugar polarising 96 0/0 quoted in George- 
town as shown by the average price given in the fort- 
nightly report issued by the Chamber of Commerce, at 
per lb. 2 to 2*10 cents; canes per punt $4.80 ; juice per 
gallon 1*35 cents, per ton canes $1.85, and for every 
tenth of a cent per lb. increase in the price of sugar 
an increase of 20 cents per punt canes, '006 per 
