Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/586

568  {{ti|1em|{{sc|Principal Crops}}.—The chief products of the province have been already enumerated. The great staple crop is rice, of which there are three harvests in the year, the boro, or spring rice ; dus, or autumn rice ; and dman, or winter rice. Of these the last or winter rice is by far the most extensively cultivated, and forms the great harvest of the year. The dman crop is grown on low land. In May, after the first fall of rain, a nursery ground is ploughed three times, and the seed scattered broadcast. When the seed lings make their appearance another field is prepared for transplanting. By this time the rainy season has thoroughly set in, and the field is dammed up so as to retain the water. It is then repeatedly ploughed until the water becomes worked into the soil, and the whole reduced to thick mud. The young rice is then taken from the nursery, and trans planted in rows about 9 inches apart. If, by reason of the backwardness of the season, the nursery ground cannot be prepared by the sowing-time in April or May, the dman rice is not transplanted at all In such a case the husband men in July or August soak the paddy in water for one day to germinate, and plant the germinated seed not in a nursery plot, but in the larger fields, which they would otherwise have used to transplant the sprouts into. It is very seldom, however, that this procedure is found neces sary, Aman rice is much more extensively cultivated than dus, and in favourable years is the most valuable crop, but being sown in low lands is liable to be destroyed by exces- sivs rainfall. Harvest takes place in December or January. Aus rice is generally sown on high ground. The field is ploughed when the early rains set in, ten or twelve times over, till the soil is reduced nearly to dust, the seed being sown broadcast in April or May. As soon as the young plants reach 6 inches in height, the land is harrowed for the purpose of thinning the crop and to clear it of weeds. The crop is harvested in August or September. Boro, or spring rice, is cultivated on low marshy land, being sown in a nursery in October, transplanted a month later, and harvested in March and April. An indigenous description of rice, called uri or jaradhdn, grows in certain marshy tracts. The grain is very small, and is gathered for con sumption only by the poorest. No tabulated statistics of cultivation exist; but in 1872-73 the quantity of rice exported from Bengal to foreign ports amounted to 288,955 tons, of the value of 1,685,170. Oil-seeds are very largely grown over the whole of Bengal, particularly in the Behar and Assam districts. The principal oil-seeds are sarisha (mustard), til (sesamum), and tisi, or masina (linseed). Exports of oil-seeds are principally confined to linseed, of which 107,723 tons were exported in 1872-73, of the value of 1,077,348. Jute (pat or Tcosta} now forms a very important commercial staple of Bengal. The cultivation of this crop has rapidly increased of late years. Its prin cipal seat of cultivation is Eastern Bengal, where the sup- perior varieties are grown. The crop grows on either high or low lands, is sown in April, and cut in August. In 1872 the area under jute cultivation in Bengal was estimated at 925,899 acres, and the yield at 496,703 tons. Jute exports from Bengal amounted in 1872-73 to 353,097 tons, value 4,127,943. Jute manufactures, in the shape of gunny bags, cloth, rope, &c., were also exported to the value of 187,149. Indigo cultivation and manufacture is princi pally carried on with European capital. In Bengal proper the industry has languished of late years, and the area under indigo cultivation greatly fallen off. In Behar, on the other hand, the area of indigo lands has increased. The annual out-turn for all Bengalis estimated at about 75,000 maunds, valued at nearly two millions sterling. Two crops of indigo are raised in the year : one sown in April or May before the setting in of the rains, and cut in August or September ; the other sown in October as the waters subside, and cut in the following July. The crop of 1872 was considerably above the average, the total exports amounting to 5962 tons, of the value of 2,704,080. Tea cultivation is the other great industry carried on by Euro pean capital. The cultivation is principally confined to Assam, which province was recently separated from the Lieutenant-Governorship, and to the northern Bengal dis trict of Darjiling. In the other localities in which tea is grown, Chhota Nagpur and Chittagong, cultivation is at present only carried on on a small scale. Tea cultivation has enormously extended of late years, and the gardens are, as a general rule, well filled with plants, highly cultivated and carefully managed. Including Assam, the total area held under the Waste Land Rules by persons connected with the tea industry, amounted in 1872 to 804,582 acres. Of this area 70,341 acres are returned as actually cultivated with tea, but this is probably too low an estimate. The exports of tea in 1872-73 amounted to 17,641,070 It), valued at 1,567,561. Besides what is exported, there is an increasing local consumption of Indian tea. In 1860 the total out-turn of tea did not exceed one million tt&amp;gt;. The cultivation of opium is a Government monopoly; no person is allowed to grow the poppy except on account of the Government. The manufacture is carried on at two separate agencies, that of Benares in the North-Western Provinces, of which the head station is at Ghazfpur ; and that of Behar, with its head station at Patna. Annual engagements are entered into by the cultivators, under a system of pecuniary advances, to sow a certain quantity of land with poppy, and the whole produce in the form of opium is delivered to Government at a fixed rate. The area under poppy cultivation in the Behar agency, situated entirely within Bengal, in 1872, amounted to 330,925 acres ; in the Benares agency to 229,430 acres, total, 560,355 acres. The number of chests of opium sold at the Government sales in Calcutta in 1872, was 42,675, the amount realised was 6,067,701, and the net revenue, 4,259,376. The cultivation of the cinchona plant in Bengal was introduced as an experiment about 1862, in a valley of the Himalayas in Darjiling district, and the enter prise has already attained a point which promises success. There are now (1874) about 2000 acres of Government cinchona plantations in Ddrjiling.}}

.—A brief statement has already been given of the principal minerals of Bengal. The coal mines of Rdnlganj, within Bardwdn district, however, demand somewhat more special notice. In this field there were, in 1872, altogether 44 mines worked, of which 19 turn out more than 10,000 tons of coal per annum apiece. In the larger and better mines, coal is raised by steam power from pits and galleries ; and in the smaller mines or work ings, by hand labour from open quarries. In the Rdniganj coal-field alone, 61 steam engines, with an aggregate of 867 horse-power, are at work. Only one seam or set of seams of less thickness than 8J feet is worked, and the average thickness of the seams at the Rdnfganj mines is about 15 or 16 feet. The pits are mostly shallow, very few are more than 150 feet deep. The Bengal Coal Company, with its mines at Raniganj and westwards, is able to raise from them 220,000 tons of coal annually. Salt manufacture was formerly a Government monopoly, principally carried on along the sea-coast of Orissa and in Midnapur district. An account of the manufacture of salt by means of evapora tion by fire is given in the account of (q.v.) The process of manufacture by means of solar evaporation will be described in the account of district. Government abandoned its monopoly of salt manufacture many years ago, and it is now carried on by private parties on their own account, subject to a Government duty in Bengal of 8s. 8d. a cwt. levied at the place of production. Salt dutiea 