Agriculture in the tropics; an elementary treatise

Front matter

h-£Wv-

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY

REFERENCE

Preface

Vll mention Mr 0. P. Austin, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States Treasury Department, Dr Melchior Treub, Director of Agriculture in the Dutch East Indies, Mr Francis Darwin, late Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, Mr I. H. Bui kill, Reporter on Economic Products to the Government of India, Mr G. W. Sturgess, Government Veterinary Surgeon, Ceylon, Mr E. E. Green, Entomologist, Mr M. Kelway Bamber, Chemist, and Mr I. Petch, Mycologist, of my own department, and last, but not least, my wife. I am also much beholden for loan of blocks for illustration to the Government of Ceylon, to the Kolonial Wirthschaftliche Komitee of Berlin, to Sir Daniel Morris of the W est Indian Agricultural Department, and others. I am much indebted for help to Mr A. E. Shipley.

JOHN C. WILLIS.

Peradeniya, Ceyt.on,

December 21, 1908.

Preface To The Second Edition

URING the last few years the various countries of the

-L' tropics have been more occupied in establishing depart¬ ments of agriculture than in considering the principles of the subject, and there has been so little profitable discussion that I have found but few altei’ations needed in this edition. In especial, I have adhered more strictly to the geographical defini¬ tion of the tropics, excluding for instance North India.

The chief criticisms made have been to the effect that India is badly misrepresented. If so, I can but apologise, but as regards indebtedness of the peasantry may refer to Sir Andrew Fraser’s recent book, where it is given at a truly astounding figure, or point to the success of the Cooperative Credit Societies, whose adoption I have preached for the last twelve years. No one can set up India as a model of agricultural efficiency or

Vlll

PREFACE progress ; she suffers now from the ruthless destruction of her natural capital that went on in former ages, and groans under a hot sun and badly distributed rainfall.

I have rewritten the chapter on rubber, which well illustrates the complex nature of the problems which lie before those interested in agricultural progress.

I am also accused of favouring the capitalist ; if the book gives that impression it must be for want of clear expression, for its main thesis is the equal encouragement of both capitalist and peasant, but that they being at different stages of progress need different treatment.

For the last two years I have resided in Brazil, and am pleased to find that nothing in the agriculture of this country requires a revision of the main propositions of the book. Brazil, in my opinion, should be the great agricultural country of the tropics at some future time, provided her natural capital can be saved from exhaustion, as it has been exhausted in most eastern countries.

J. C. W.

in Primitive Times, and

its Gradual Change

Part II The Principal Cultivations Of The Tropics

I. Rice and other Cereals and Food Plants ... 40

II. Sugar . 54

III. Teas . . 59

IV. Coffee, Cacao or Chocolate, Kola, etc. ... 65

V. Coconuts and other Palms . 75

VI. Spices . 82

VII. Fruits and Vegetables . 89

VIII. Tobacco, Opium, Hemp . 97

IX. Cinchona and other Drugs . 101

X. Fibre-yielding Plants . 105

XI. Dye Stuffs and Tanning Substances . . . .114

X

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

XII. Oil-yielding Plants . 116

XIII. Indiarubber, Guttapercha, and Camphor . . .120

XIV. Mixed Garden Cultivation by Tropical Natives . 131

XV. The Diseases op Plants in the Tropics, and their

Treatment . 133

XVI. Stock . 138

Part III Agriculture In The Tropics (general)

I. Village or Peasant Agriculture . 142

II. The Relations of the Peasant to the Land and Crops ;

Culture Systems, etc. . . . • . . .149

III. The Financing of Village Agriculture, and the

Provision of Local Markets . 155

IV. The Crops and Methods of Peasant Agriculture, and

their Possibilities of Improvement .... 161

V. Education of the Peasant, and its bearing upon

Agricultural Progress . 174

VI. Capitalist or Estate Agriculture . . . . 179

VII. The Agricultural Needs of the Planting Enterprise.

Summary of Part III . 190

Part IV Agricultural Organisation And Policy

I. Organisation of Agriculture . 196

II. Agricultural Policy . 200

III. Departments of Agriculture . 217

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE

I.

Terraced rice fields near Kandy, Ceylon .

Opposite p.

II.

Rotation of crops on Rice Fields in Java .

J)

Ill (a).

High Lands and Paddy Fields .

Ill ( b ).

Winnowing Paddy .

J5

IV.

Sugar Cane in Java .

V.

Tea Estate in Ceylon .

JJ

VI.

Plucking Tea .

VII (a).

Withering Tea .

Rolling Tea .

i)

VIII.

Arabian Coffee, cultivated under shade, in

Java .

IX. Criollo Cacao, in fruit

Drying Cacao in the Sun (Ceylon)

>1

Cacao drying house in Surinam with moveable

platforms to roll out ....

XII. Making Copra in Samoa

XIII (a).

Preparing Cinnamon .

XIII (6).

Picking Cardamoms .

>5

XIV (a).

A Tobacco Field in Sumatra

Fermenting Tobacco in Sumatra

>5

)5

XV.

Cinchona suceirubra in Java ; 30 years old .

5 J

XVI.

Interior of' Cotton Factory in the West

Indies .

XVII.

Sisal hemp in Yucatan ....

XVIII (a). Rubber Plantation in Ceylon

V

XVIII (6). Making biscuits on the small scale .

XIX.

Rubber tapping on the Amazon by aid of a

scaffolding .

XX.

Plantation of camphor in Ceylon

XXI (a).

Mule Plough in Mexico ....

XXI (b).

River transport in Ceylon ....

XXII.

Cart Transport in Ceylon ....

XXIII.

A School Garden .

XXIV.

Plan of suggested arrangement of land,

transport, and drainage

Introduction

The tropics include an immense area of land in every continent but Europe. Their agriculture, however, was until lately only of serious importance to the world at large in Southern Asia, Brazil, Mexico, Central America and the West Indies, West Africa, North Australia, and a few groups of islands in the Pacific. The following rough figures, giving in round numbers the value or bulk of the chief exports from some of the principal exporting countries, will give some idea of the enormous trade that now goes on, and which is increasing year by year.

Cotton (raw) . .

£39,069,000

„ (manufactured) .

18,935,000

Grains, pulse, and flour .

10,097,000

Hides and skins .

15,604,000

Jute (raw) .

16,466,000

„ (manufactured)

33,344,000

Lac

4,843,000

Seeds (oils, etc.) .

17,506,000

Tea .

13,710,000

Ceylon, 1919.

Tea .

Rubber .

132,100,000

Coconut products

86,500,000

Cinnamon ... .

3,700,000

Cacao .

3,100,000

Areca nuts

3,000,000

Citronella oil .

900,000

Cardamoms .

900,000

Tobacco . .

600,000

Rsl5 = £l

INTRODUCTION xiii metric tons

Sugar .

1,574,201

Copra .

68,578

Rubber .

44,096

Tea • .

30,452

Cassava products .

28,129

Pepper .

25,899

Fibres (except kapok) .

19,696

Kapok .

9,253

Tobacco .

8,050

Coffee ... . .

7,357

Quinine bark .

2,440

Nutmegs .

2,338

Coca .

Coconut oil (1000 litres) .

33,237

Indo-China, 1917.

Rice .

1,366,748

Maize .

12,425

Philippine Islands, 1917—18.

Abaca or Manila hemp . $54 493 970

Sugar .

13,304,770

Copra .

9,527,241

Cigars .

5,708,718

Other tobacco and cigarettes .

5,059,655

Gold Coast, 1919.

Palm Kernels .

9,986

Kola nuts .

7,143

Federated Malay States, 1919.

Rubber .

Copra .

26,650

Sugar .

XIV Introduction

Sisal hemp

Cotton

Barbados, 1918.

Sugar (estimated)

Jamaica, 1919.

Cocoa

Coconuts ...

Coffee

Fruit (chiefly Pimento . . .

Rum Sugar bananas)

£286,000

285,000

356,000

1,141,000

184,000

924,000

1,317,000

Trinidad, 1918.

Sugar . .

Rum .

Cocoa .

British Guiana, 1919.

Brazil, 1920.

Coffee (bags of 60 kilos each) ...

Sugar .

Mat£ .

Chilled meat .

Cocoa .

Hides .

Tobacco .

Cotton .

Rubber .

INTRODUCTION

XV

When we look over this and similar lists, and realise that the tropics supply us with all our cinchona bark (for quinine), cinnamon, coconuts, coconut oil, copra, coir, coffee, gutta-percha, jute, palm-oil, rice (with the exception of a little in the Southern United States), rubber, sago, spices, sugar (except the beet sugar of the continent), tea, tapioca, and many other things, the vast importance of agriculture in the tropics, and of its proper conservation, improvement and extension, will be understood. The area occupied by the cultivation of the export products is perhaps 50 million acres and that spent in maintaining the actual people of the tropics is perhaps about another 275 millions. Even at this rate not more than half the available land is used, and not only so, but much of it is very inefficiently used, while intensive agriculture, as practised in Europe or America, is almost unknown, except among European planters. Could the yield of cereals in India, for example, be increased by a mere bushel an acre, a vast difference would for a time be made in the economic prosperity of that country. This, however, is more easily said than done.

The agriculture conducted by Europeans in the tropics is more efficient than that of the natives of the country. This may be roughly illustrated by the case of Ceylon, where the exports of “ European ” produce are to those of “ native ” produce as 3 to 1, while the area cultivated by the former, and the population supported by it, are only as 1 to 5, the popula¬ tion being equally dense in either case, or denser on the European estates.

Before agriculture upon any but the very smallest scale or basis can be carried on in a country, there must be in that country satisfactory conditions as regards certain indispensable preliminaries.

Land must be available at a moderate cost. The price of land will naturally vary with its advantages as regards nearness to market, good or bad transport facilities, good or bad climate, and many other things, but “moderate” in the sense used here will of course take note of all these things.

Roads or other means of transport must be in good order, to bring material to the plantation and to take the produce

XVI

INTRODUCTION away. Without good means of transport, it is idle to expect any serious agricultural industries to be carried on, for sale or export of the produce.

Capital, to some extent at least, must be forthcoming. Even those undertakings which soonest give a return, such as cotton, whose crop can be picked in six months, need a certain amount of capital to tide over the period of waiting ; without this only the very smallest enterprises can be carried on, and even these will often be in an unhealthy condition, their crops being mortgaged to money-lenders.

Labour must also be available, if any but very small enterprises are to go on. A man and his family cannot obviously till more than a few acres at most, and for anything more extensive — and efficiency in agriculture largely goes with the larger enterprises — we must have hired labour. This difficulty is one of the greatest that confront anyone proposing to start agricultural enterprises in the tropics. In India, Ceylon, the Malay States, Java, and some of the West Indian islands, labour is comparatively plentiful, but elsewhere it is usually difficult to obtain.

In the first part of this book, we propose to discuss, in brief, these necessary preliminaries to agriculture. In the second we shall consider the principal cultivated crops of the tropics in a general way, with a view partly to making sugges¬ tions for their improvement. In the third part we shall go on to consider village and capitalist agriculture respectively, with the directions in which improvement seems most possible, and in the concluding part of the work shall discuss agricultural policy, and the organisation of a department of agriculture, a thing which has now become a necessity in most tropical countries.

Chapter I Land And Soil

Land in the tropics may be of many types, but the two chief kinds are forest and grass lands, and it is as a rule only on the former (or what has been so) that there is much agri¬ culture. Speaking broadly, the greater part of the land near to the sea is, or has been (as apparently in India), covered with forest, which in general marks the districts of good and well-distributed rainfall. In the interior of tropical Africa, and in parts of South America, what the Americans term savannahs, i.e. open park-like grass lands, with patches of forest here and there, prevail.

Forest land is preferred for agriculture, not only on account of its (usually) better rainfall, but also on account of its richer soil, due to the humus, or decaying organic matter, contained in it. The forest is felled, and burnt off in the drier weather of the year. As a rule the timber does not pay to work, and is completely burnt, enough only being kept for houses, factories, etc. The crops are put out among the stumps, which in a few years are completely removed by decay and white ants.

A very favourite method of cultivation, among natives in the east at any rate, is what is called in Ceylon chena, in Malaya ladang, in India j burning, etc. The forest, or rather the trees in it below a certain girth, is felled and burnt, and various cereals or other crops are sown upon the land in the rains. On a rich, newly cleared land, these give a very large return for a minimum of work, and this method of cultivation is in consequence highly popular, until the country becomes too thickly peopled to admit of it. After one to three crops the land is abandoned, and grows up in scrubby jungle, and may be again chena-ed after 8 — 50 years. Vast areas of good forest land have been ruined in southern Asia by this destructive practice, and in most countries chena permits for crown land are only issued now under stress of very hard times and failure of the regular crops.

Land in the tropics may be held in a variety of ways. For instance, in Ceylon the tenure is fully freehold, and the owner of land leaves it to his children, the men taking it in equal shares, as in France. By this means, emigration even to new districts in the same country is rendered difficult, and there is little chance of anyone showing any agricultural enterprise, unless he be a comparatively large holder of land. The ordinary villager owns a mere trifle of land, as a rule barely sufficient for his own support and that of his family. In this way, the land becomes very “ ancestral,” and the same family may go on in the same place for an almost unlimited number of generations. When the area is small, the ownership is com¬ monly joint and this still further retards agricultural progress, for all the owners must consent before any change can be introduced.

While in Ceylon the holder of land pays no tax to the Government, in India he pays a considerable levy upon his land, but most often, perhaps, holds it otherwise freehold. In India, Ceylon, and other eastern countries the ancient system of “villages” prevails, these being divisions of country of 500 acres or more, sometimes, but not always, with a central village street or group of houses. Very often some of the land is cultivated, some waste, and most commonly, perhaps, the latter is the joint property of the village, all the villagers being allowed to graze their cattle on it, or to cut wood there. The villages themselves may be “joint” villages, owned in their entirety by the community living in them, who work the land

LAND AND SOIL

CH. i]

in sections appropriated to each family, sometimes on a more or less cooperative system ; but more often, within the tropics, they are not such villages, but each family actually owns (or leases) a piece of land. In the former case the village is assessed as a whole for the payment of the Government tax; in the latter each proprietor is separately assessed. In both cases the village artisans are often paid by a levy on the produce.

In the Federated Malay States, land is regarded as entirely the property of the Government ; in fact, “ land nationalisation,” so much discussed in Europe, is already an accomplished fact in this country. Anyone may buy land from the Government on payment of a premium of one dollar or so an acre, and an annual quit-rent of one or more dollars an acre. Should he cease to pay the rent, or abandon the land for three consecutive years, the Government steps in and resumes possession of it. The original grant of the land from the Government is for 999 years, so that there is no fear of the possessor being disturbed, so long as he continues to work the land properly, but the Government is entitled ,to revise the rate of quit-rent payable every 30 years. In many ways this is perhaps the best system of alienating land from the Government, for the latter derive an annual income from it, and resume it if abandoned, while the original buyer does not need to expend so much capital on the actual purchase as he does for instance in Ceylon, where he buys the land outright; and thus he has more available for cultivation.

In the West Indies, and in most of the modern British tropical colonies, the land is freehold, and though at one time in the former it was very largely held in big blocks for sugar ’ and other plantations, it is now passing to some extent into the hands of small peasant proprietors.

Except in the thinly peopled countries it is gradually becoming more and more difficult to obtain considerable blocks of land for the larger agricultural enterprises, for the small proprietor usually sticks very closely to his own little patch of land, and refuses to sell it, even if it be almost surrounded by a large estate.

1—2

[PT. I

Soils. Speaking generally, the soils of the tropics are very poor as compared with those of the temperate zone. Instead of the comparatively dark colour and damp look of the latter, which is partly due to the larger content of humus, or decaying organic matter, they show a light colour and rather dry appearance in ordinary fine weather, being very poor in humus. Decay takes place so rapidly and so completely that there is but little accumulation of its products.

The soils that occur are of every conceivable kind, depending mainly upon the subjacent rocks. The richest are in general the volcanic soils such as are found in Java, the West Indies, and elsewhere, but there are also very good deposited or alluvial soils in Ceylon, India, the Malay States, and in other countries. And it is worthy of notice, as tending to show that superior richness, provided that the two soils have both all the elements of plant food in fair amount, often makes but little diffei’ence, that the growth of most cultivated crops in Java, such as tea, cacao, rubber, etc., is but little superior to that in the poor soils of Ceylon, and sometimes is not so good1.

Probably as the result of the lack of humus, the tropical soils seem on the whole to be rather less water-retaining than those of more northern countries, and the plants growing in them (in the open) tend to flag rather more quickly for lack of water, though it is true that the sun is so much hotter that this may probably be sufficient to account for the fact.

1 This, formerly au unexplained fact, becomes clearer in the light of recent physiological work. Cf. Blackman, Optima and Limiting Factors, Annals of Botany, xix, 1905, p. 281; Smith, Application of the theory of Limiting Factors to Measurements of Growth, Annals R, B. O. Peradeniya, m, 1906, p. 303.

Chapter II Climate

The tropics cover so vast an area that it is obvious that there must be a great variety in climates, but in general the types of climate may be set down as two : the moist, near the equator and the sea ] and the dry, inland, and usually away from the equator. The former is characterised by a moist air, and a comparatively uniform temperature, with but little daily or annual variation, the latter by a considerable range, often, if it be far from the equator, annual as well as daily, and a dry air ; while of course as one ascends the mountains one as a rule comes into a cooler and moister climate.

Every type of climate may be met with in passing from the south of Ceylon to the north of India, so that a comparison of some of the figures for various places lying between these extremes will be useful, while others are also given. The nearer to the equator, other things being equal, the smaller is the annual range of temperature :

Manila Chinchoxo Lado Colon Rio de Janeiro Sao Paulo1 Mean max. 96 86 88 92 86 94

1 Elevation 2485 feet,

[PT. I

It will be noticed that the range is greater the lower the humidity, in addition to increasing as one passes to the north ; compare for instance Madura and Cochin, which are in approxi¬ mately the same latitude.

The prevailing character of the climate near the equator and near the sea, as at Colombo, is a very uniform temperature, with rain at all times of the year, but more especially when the sun has just passed overhead. Near the equator, therefore, there are two more specially rainy seasons in the year, at intervals of about six months, while as one goes northward they get nearer and nearer together, till in the far north or south of the tropics they run into one rainy season of a few months duration, as the following tables of rainfall will illustrate.

Colombo Trichinopoli Bangalore Bombay Nagpur Calcutta

Jan.

3-0

1-0

0-2

o-i

0-6

0-4

Feb.

1-7

0-5 o-o

0-4

1-0

Mar.

5-5

0-7

0-6

o-o

0-6

1-3

Apr.

8'8'

0-5

May

5-0

0-5

0-8

5-6

June

8-2

3-2

20-8'

8-8'

11*81

July

5’5

2‘2

4-0

24-7

130 |

Aug.

4-5

4-4

5-9'

15-1

— r

*5

Sept.

4-9

5-3'

6*3

10-8

7-8

Oct.

12-9'

7-8

| 1*8

2'3

5-4

Nov.

12-7

1 1-9

0-5

0-4

Dec.

1 31

0-7

OT

0'5

0-3 1

Rainy seasons indicated by brackets.

The longer the dry season, the hotter, generally speaking, it becomes, so that in the north of India the heat is often extreme at the end of the dry weather, whereas, near the equator, where there is rain at all times, the highest temperatures recorded are rarely above 90°. The range of temperature is greater in the northern hemisphere than in the southern, where the land masses are smaller, and only in the interior of Australia does the temperature become anything like so high as in north India.

1 Blanford, Climate and Weather of India and Ceylon.

CH. Il]

CLIMATE

Near the equator, and near the sea, the climate is wonderfully uniform, the mean temperatures of the twelve months at Colombo being for example 79, 80, 82, 83, 83, 82, 81, 81, 81, 81, 80, 80, while at Singapore they are almost the same. On the average, in Colombo, the • temperature only reaches about 86° during the day, and falls to about 75° at night. In drier places inland the daily range is greater, but the annual range is much the same until one gets far from the equator.

Humidity, other things being equal, increases with elevation. Thus Colombo at sea level, and Hakgala at 5600 feet, have much the same rainfall, similarly distributed, and their average humidities are 78 and 87 respectively.

Another feature which makes some difference to the climate of a place is the exposure upon the mountains. Thus in Ceylon, when the south-west monsoon is blowing, there is heavy rain upon the western side of the mountain chain, while the eastern side, is comparatively dry. While the rainfall at Ratnapura, on the south-western side, is 20'78 inches in June, that at Badulla, 50 miles away, upon the eastern side, is only 2 66 inches. In the north-east monsoon, which blows for six months in the year in the opposite direction, the positions are reversed, so that the main wet seasons in the two places differ by about six months, and the periodicity of the phenomena of plant life is also different, Para rubber for instance ripening its seeds at Badulla in February, and at Ratnapura in August.

The actual direction of exposure of a place upon the mountains also makes a difference. In Java and Ceylon, the mornings are comparatively cloudless compared with the after¬ noons. It therefore follows that, in general, a place with an eastern exposure will get more sunshine than one with an exactly similar exposure to the west. In the extreme north of the tropics, a place with a northern exposure will, other things being equal, be colder than one with a southern exposure, and in the extreme south the reverse will be the case.

The amount of sunshine falling upon a particular place is also a feature of some importance. The temperature in the sun is usually very high, amounting to 140° — 170° F., while that in

[PT. I

the shade will in general be 60° — 80° lower. While in places like Singapore, where the influence of the monsoons is slight, there may he sunshine nearly every day, in places like Ceylon, where they are very pronounced, there may be weeks or even months with hardly a gleam of sunshine during the first onset of the monsoons.

Rain in the tropics usually falls in violent showers, rapidly raising the levels of the streams, making roads and flowerbeds “ swim ” with water, and doing a good deal of damage by the silting up of stream beds, .washing away of soil, etc. The usual shower varies from 0 03 to 3'0 inches, and it falls in a much shorter time than in Europe.

Wind in the tropics is, generally speaking, light compared with that found, for instance, in Great Britain. In the monsoon region of South Asia, near the equator the wind blows fairly steadily for six months in one, and six in the other direction, the year being less evenly divided further north.

In tropical, as in other countries, elevation has a very definite influence upon the climate, the mean temperature — and that for practically all hours of the day and night — falling about 35° — 4° F. for every 1000 feet of ascent. Thus in Ceylon, to take places with about similar and similarly distributed rain¬ fall, the mean temperature of various months in Colombo, at sea level, runs from 79° to 83°, at Peradeniya, 1560 feet above sea level, from 74° to 79°, and at Hakgala, 5600 feet above sea level, from 58° to 63°. To dwellers in Europe, where the thermo¬ meter may easily range from the highest to the lowest of these figures in one day, these may seem trifling differences, but they have a most marked effect upon vegetable life where they go on, as these do, all the year round. Hardly a plant grown in the botanic gardens at Hakgala is the same as in the gardens at Peradeniya, and this is not from any wish to keep the collec¬ tions dissimilar, but because plants which will grow at the latter place will often not grow at the former except under glass. With the exception of camphor and tea, which come from much further north, and are most accommodating to temperature, but few cultivations can be successfully carried on in both places.

CH. II]

CLIMATE

The range of temperature varies according to the slope, to some extent, and on open plains at high elevations there is often a very considerable range of temperature, making the climate very unlike that of places lying upon the slopes quite near by. Thus at Nuvvara Eliya in Ceylon, which lies upon an open plain at an elevation of 6200 feet, the thermometer ranges between 28° and 81° during the drier season of the year, while at Hakgala, only six miles off, and 600 feet lower, the extremes are about 37' and 79° during the same period, Hakgala lying upon the ordinary mountain slopes. Consequently, perhaps, many Euro¬ pean plants of the north succeed at Nuwara Eliya, while they merely struggle for life at Hakgala. The greater range of temperature on the plain is probably largely due to the greater radiation that goes on ; and it will be noticed that there is more difference between the minima than between the maxima.

The character of the soil also has to some extent an effect upon the climate, a sandy soil being liable to get much more heated during the day and cooled at night than a clayey one, so that there is a greater range of temperature upon the former. Drainage of the soil, more particularly in swampy land, thus has a tendency to make the range of temperature greater.

The effect upon the climate of the clearing of the forests in a country has been a fruitful source of dispute, many of the disputants ignoring the fact that it need not necessarily be the same in all countries. So far as the tropics are concerned, its general effect seems to be to make the climate warmer and drier. In Ceylon, for example, at Peradeniya and Kandy, 1600 feet above sea level, most of the houses built prior to 1850 had fire¬ places, which are now quite unnecessary, all the forest having been cleared from the neighbourhood, and the mean temperature having apparently risen. In the Federated Malay States, the climate at corresponding elevations appears to be slightly cooler or at least more uniform and damper than in Ceylon, the whole country being much covered with forest.

The clearing of the forest acts in a disastrous way upon the streams, these being now much exposed, and consequently liable to dry up during dry weather. Most of the streams which rise in the lower parts of the western mountains of Ceylon now dry