INDIA'S PROGRESS IN 1874-75.

Clutha Leader, Volume III, Issue 138, 2 March 1877, Page 7

INDIA'S PROGRESS IN 1874-75.

(Allen's Indian Mall.) The working of model farms in different provinces seems to lead to very, doubtful results. In Bengal they have been an acknowledged failure. The model farm at Saidapet, in Madras, was very successful, except from a financial point of view. The . model farms in Bombay are allowed by the Government to be of much service in certain ways, but ill suited to meet the practical wants of a poor peasantry with small holdings, the urops on which require no special labour nor expensivemanures. The results of the Nag-pur model farm were trifling, and gained at heavy cost. It is thought that a better mode of improving husbandry is to be found in schools of agriculture, one of which was projected for Bahar, and another for tiaidapet. Government efforts to improve the breed of horses in Bombay were furtbei'ed by seven horse shows held during the year, which were visited by appreciative crowds. The farmers seem quite alive to the value of stud-horses supplied by Government, and resort to them freely. The cattle shows were less successful in point of quality ; although the stook of oxen, sheep, and goats has steadiiy increased, and a better style of feeding has set in, the breeds have " sunk to the lowest possible point." In Punjab three new cattle fairs were started with success during the year* raising the total of such fairs to fifteen. Cattle disease was very fatal in British Burma!), where the people take small care of their stock. The number of ploughs in that province increased in one year by as much as a half. ' Savage chiefs competed for prizes at an agricultural show in Northern Arakan, and two Khan.i chie f j were on the committee. Owing chiefly to a fall in the price of cotton, there was a marked decrease in the acreage under cotton in Madras. The same thing occurred in the Native States of Western India* The increase of cotton-culture in the Bombay Presidency was solely due to indigenous cotton, the out turn of which exceeded by 9?, 661 cwts., the average of the four preceeding years. In the Sind collectorate of Haidarabad, the yield is said to have reached 287-19 lbs per acre. This, however, is nothing to the yield of 473 lbs obtained at Salaru from experiments made on a model farm with the help of an English plough. The saw-ginned cotton of Dharwar wa3 on the whole of fair quality,, and a marked improvement was reported in the produce of* Khandesh. Broach, however, still reigned supreme in the cotton market. In spite of an increased cultivation the outturn of cotton in the Punjab was poor. The best cotton in the Central Provinces is grown in Nagpur and Warda. There was a large, increase in the cotton area of'Berar* The cotton raised in Northern Arakan, while inferior to the Egyptian staple, yields a much larger crop, and little cultivation. With regard to the comparative yield of irrigated and uhirrigated rice-lands, it appears from experiments made in 1873 b^ Mr Apjohn, in Midnapur, that in ordinary years the crops from the former are "to ihose from the latter as 6 to 5, while in bad years the difference will be as much as" 4£ to 1. The attempts made to grow Carolina rice in Bengal failed as usual in 1874. In Ratnagiri on the Bombay side similar attempts were more successful. The natives there prefer the Carolina rice as yielding a larger and heavier grain, and

sometimes a second crop. The same kind of rice was grown successfully in the North- West Province and the Punjab, but the natives complained of the difficulty of husking it without breaking the grain. Chinchona culture prospered in Sikbira during the year under review. The red bark, if Jess rich in quinine than the yellow, appears to yield a larger quantity of the fever-conquering alkaloid. Its advantages in this respect can now be utilised by the discovery of a cheap and efficient method of extracting the alkaloid from the Bark. The bark produced in the Nilgiri plantations and sent hom,e for sale fetched an average of 4s. the pound, or more than a shillingabove that of the previous year. The attempt to grow chinchona on 'he Mahableshwar Hills in Bombay has been abandoned after ten years' failures, ascribed to the unfitness of the climate. Fn Myspr and British Burmah, on the other hand, chinchona culture was steadily gaining ground. Tea-planting in Bengal and Assam has already becomn a paying* industry. Every year increases the number of teagardens, well-stocked, and carefully managed, the produce of which commands good average prices. The average yield per acre in Darjiling 1 rose from 256 lbs in 1872 to about 325 in 1874. It is only of late years that tea-planting has made any real progress in Nllgiris. In the North- West Provinces the outturn for the year amounted to 1 ,217,975 lbs. The Nilgiri Hills -have also witnessed the growth of coffee-planting in twenty years from 500 to 13,000 acres. Mysor and Kurg are also the seats of a thriving trade in coffee. Tobacco is grown extensively in Bengal, Madras, British Burmah, and the Central Provinces. Various experiments have been made under Government auspices for improving the quality andcuring of the native plant. The introduction of Manilla seed into British Burmah appears so' far to. have turned out well; but in Madras and the Central Provinces the native taste seems to prefer the coarser kinds of tobacco. to the best produce of Virginian seeds. The in-digo-crop in Bengal, owing to the drought, was one of the worst on record. There was a decrease in the area planted with indigo in Madras. With regard to the forest lands, we find that in 1874 a large addition was made to the reserved area, chiefly in the Sumlarbans and Chittag'ong. There appears to have been of late a sad waste of timber in the Darjiling Hills and the Sundnrbans, owing to the spread of teaplnnting in the one place, and of boatbuilding in the other. The Government have sought to check this waste by issuing strict rules for the protection of the forest reserves. Sir R. Temple's appeal to the Minister of the Sikhim Rajah to try and chock the ruthless destruction of magnificent sftl and pine forests in Sikhim appears to have borne some fruit. In Bombay much progress was made in selecting and marking- off forest reserves, and steps were taken to guard the forests of Sind from the encroachments of the Indus. The 3 r oung plantations were everywhere doing well, and increased by many thousands of seedlings. In the Punjab also, some good work was done in the way of enlarging the forest area under Government control. Littlft has vet been done towards the extension of forest reserves in Assam, whose vast supplies of timber would g-o far to make up for the growing deficiency in Bengal. More than three handiod square miles were added to the forest reserve in the Central Provinces, and those in British Burmah were enlarged to nearly the same extent. In the latter province the breeding of lac was carried on successfully, and the attempts made to propagate this useful insect in the woods of the Central Provinces bade fair to prosper also. The ' seed had been applied to a large number of trees in the Satpura reserves, and the insects " had taken %yell," but the crop was not due till November, 1875. These experiments open out a source of large and easy profits to the State, for the cost of collecting the lac from a regular nursery will be merely nominal*