paratively recent, and the progress has been very satisfactory. The value of the exports has increased from £75,000 in 1849 to £1,250,000 in 1874; and upwards of 100,000 acres are now planted with coffee in Coorg and the Wynaad alone, besides large tracts in Travancore.

The cultivation of tea, coffee and indigo in India has been taken up by some of our retired officers, and provides occupation for a great many young men, who go out from England to superintend the plantations and manufacture. On some of the plantations a few of the more enterprising agriculturists produce other valuable plants such as India rubber, Tobacco, Chincona, &c., which are sent forward to Calcutta, Bombay and Madras for shipment to Europe.

Indigo-Is chiefly cultivated in Behar and the N.W. Provinces and is exported to all parts of the world. The trade in this beautiful dye has grown in the last ten years from two to three and a-half millions sterling.

Saltpetre. The soil of Upper India teems with "villanous saltpetre," which modern nations find so indispensable, either for peace or war. This article, which the Indian husbandman would so gladly miss from his fields, is collected and exported to Europe, America and China to the value of about half a million sterling per annum.

Timber. The forests of British Burmah yield rich stores of teak, that most valuable timber, which is now extensively used in this country. Nearly as hard and durable as oak, it is casier to work and it can be polished

* In the beautiful valley of Kangra in the Himalayas there are more than thirty Europeans solely engaged in tea planting.

as highly as mahogany; in ship building and railway carriages it is especially serviceable, and for beauty and solidity combined no wood surpasses it. The teak ships built in Bombay, Cochin and Singapore were found after fifty years of hard work to be as tough and seaworthy when new; and but for the changes that have taken place in naval architecture, whereby a modern iron ship is capable of carrying a much heavier cargo than the oldfashioned vessels the pride of our youth, these good old craft would still be ploughing the waters.

Other woods, such as the Himalaya pines and deodars serve many purposes of use and ornament. The Sâl forests of the Himalayas provide sleepers for our railways. The light and feathery bamboo growing everywhere in India must not be overlooked. This invaluable wood, always available, is put to every conceivable purpose; it provides the supports for the rude huts in the jungle; tipped with iron it may be used for an instrument of war or implement of husbandry; sawn off above a knot it makes a drinking cup; it is used for making pens, and for musical instruments; it forms the arms for the palanquins to carry the living, or the bier to bear the dead to the funeral pile. In Japan young bamboo stewed or preserved is esteemed a great luxury. In China and Persia old bamboo is in more frequent request, but the application is external and of a less agreeable character; it is usually applied to the back or to the soles of the feet. The fibre is worked up into mats and baskets and boats' sails. The Sissa or black wood of Bombay, the sandal wood of Southern India and ebony of the West are known to us all in the exquisite

carved pieces of furniture, inlaid boxes and ornaments which so admirably exhibit the artistic taste of the workman and the beauty of the material.

Within the last sixteen years the Government of India has very properly undertaken the conservancy of the forests; on the one hand the department has to take care that timber is felled and disposed of upon prudent and safe principles, and that there is no needless waste of the valuable tracts of forest at the disposal of Government; on the other hand the cultivation of the more valuable timber needed for the construction of public works, railway sleepers and for commerce has to be attended to. The young men selected in England for this work have to undergo a special education, and are sent to Germany and other countries to study other forest conservancy systems before taking up their duties in India. The practical value of this good service cannot be over-estimated when we bear in mind not only the value of the timber but the disasters that have overtaken Eastern countries, where fertile districts have been rendered barren deserts by the reckless destruction of the forests. Through the influence of cultivation rains are now periodical in parts of Scinde where they were formerly rare as at Aden, that barren rock garrisoned by our Indian troops. By clothing the bare hill sides with wood, and by judicious planting, not only may rains be rendered more regular and genial, thus lessening the chances of frequent drought and famine, so fearfully destructive to human and animal life in India, but something may be done to limit, if not prevent those terrible floods, which carry everything before them whilst they

last; climates also may be changed and unhealthy districts rendered more salubrious. Before leaving this subject we must mention the valuable service rendered to India by the introduction of the Chincona and ipecacuanha plants. The important medicinal properties of quinine produced from the Chincona bark are well known to all, but the boon to India is especially great; with the aid of this powerful restorative travellers ward off attacks of jungle and malarious fever; and many have shewn, like the great African traveller Livingstone, how with its aid they have been able to prosecute their journeys and their work, when without it they must have succumbed to disease. Ipecacuanha is now accepted as the most efficacious remedy in the treatment of dysentery, the malady of all others most destructive to European life in India. Chincona was introduced into India in the year 1860, and Mr. Clement Markham, C.B., the courteous and well-known Secretary of the Geographical Society superintended the transport of the plants from South America to the Neilgerries, where by care they have been successfully grown; and the Indian cultivation is so far secured, that there is no longer any anxiety as to the supply of this invaluable bark. The ipecacuanha root more recently introduced, has been planted on the outer slopes of the Sikhim Himalaya, and there is every reason to hope for equal success with it.

Tobacco-Is widely cultivated for home use in many parts of India, but as yet the quantity imported into Europe has been very limited, owing to defects which are still to be remedied in the process of preparing the leaf. Agriculture.-As before stated India is essentially an

agricultural country, and the mass of the population support themselves by husbandry, but in the tillage of the soil the ryots, or peasantry, follow the rude and inefficient methods of their forefathers, merely scratching the surface of the ground by means of a bullock-plough of the most feeble and primitive construction, using little manure or other means to aid the dormant resources of the soil, and in the absence of irrigation, trusting the coming harvest solely to the sun and rain of heaven. The ryots' mode of rearing live stock is equally antiquated.

General and scientific farming, as practised in Europe, America and Australia has never been really tried in India.

The European planters of India, unlike the native ryots, are an enterprising and prosperous class, and the increasing demands for the products before enumerated when treating of the commerce of India, necessitate the use of machinery and ever-improving modes of culti vation. Native farmers, like their brethren elsewhere, are slow to adopt changes, and do not readily take either to improved implements or a more scientific mode of working. Animal food is so little consumed by the natives of India, that the profits of raising agricultural stock are not sufficiently high to encourage expenditure in the direction of rearing improved breeds of sheep and cattle. Efforts to improve the quality of cattle and horses and to introduce foreign seeds and plants have from time to time emanated from the Government, and experimental farms have been worked in the Presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay which have been of service in the selected localities and have helped to