Cultivation and Products.—The area of uncultivated land is little over 3½ million acres, whereas fully four times that amount is capable of cultivation. A great deal is waste, besides lagoons, tanks, backwaters, &c. Thick forest land does not cover more than 5000 sq. m. Scrub, or chena, and patana grass cover a very great area. Tea, cacao, cardamoms, cinchona, coffee and indiarubber are the products cultivated by European and an increasing number of native planters in the hill country and part of the low country of Ceylon. A great change has been effected in the appearance of the country by the introduction of the tea plant in place of the coffee plant, after the total failure of the latter owing to disease. For some time coffee had been the most important crop. In the old days it grew wild like cinnamon, and was exported so far back as the time of the Portuguese, but was lightly esteemed as an article of European commerce, as the berry was gathered unripe, was imperfectly cured and had little flavour. In 1824 the governor, Sir E. Barnes, introduced coffee cultivation on the West Indian plan; in 1834 the falling off of other sources of supply drew general attention to Ceylon, and by 1841 the Ceylon output had become considerable, and grew steadily (with an interval in 1847 due to a commercial crisis) till 1877 when 272,000 acres were under coffee cultivation, the total export amounting to 103,000,000 ℔ Then owing to disease came a crisis, and a rapid decline, and now only a few thousand acres are left. On the failure of the coffee crops planters began extensively to grow the tea plant, which had already been known in the island for several years. By 1882 over 20,000 acres had been planted with tea, but the export that year was under 700,000 ℔ Five years later the area planted was 170,000 acres, while the export had risen to nearly 14,000,000 ℔ By 1892 there were 262,000 acres covered with tea, and 71,000,000 ℔ were that year exported. In 1897, 350,000 acres were planted, and the export was 116,000,000 ℔ By the beginning of the 20th century, the total area cultivated with tea was not under 390,000 acres, while the estimate of shipments was put at 146,000,000 ℔ annually. Nearly every plantation has its factory, with the machinery necessary to prepare the leaf as brought in from the bushes until it becomes the tea of commerce. The total amount of capital now invested in the tea industry in Ceylon cannot be less than £10,000,000. The tea-planting industry more than anything else has raised Ceylon from the depressed state to which it fell in 1882.
Before tea was proved a success, however, cinchona cultivation was found a useful bridge from coffee to the Ceylon planter, who, however, grew it so freely that in one year 15,000,000 ℔ bark was shipped, bringing the price of quinine down from 16s. to 1s. 6d. an ounce.
In a few places, where the rainfall is abundant, rice cultivation is allowed to depend on the natural supply of water, but in most parts the cultivation is not attempted unless there is secured beforehand a certain and sufficient supply, by means of canals or reservoirs. In the hill country every valley and open plain capable of tillage is made to yield its crops of grain, and the steep sides of the hills are cut into terraces, on which are seen waving patches of green rice watered by mountain streams, which are conducted by means of channels ingeniously carried round the spurs of the hills and along the face of acclivities, by earthen water-courses and bamboo aqueducts, so as to fertilize the fields below. These works bear witness to the patience, industry and skill of the Kandyan villagers. In the low country to the north and east and north-west of the hills, irrigation works of a more expensive kind are necessary. In January 1892, the immemorial rent or tax on fields of paddy (rice in the husk) was removed, but not the customs duty on imported rice. But even with the advantage of protection to the extent of 10% in the local markets, there has been no extension of paddy cultivation; on the contrary, the import of grain from India has grown larger year by year. Through the multiplication of irrigation works and the northern railway, rice culture may be sufficiently extended to save some of the large imports (8,000,000 to 9,000,000 bushels annually) now required from India.
Tobacco is extensively cultivated in various parts of the island, and the growth of particular places, such as Dumbara and Uva, is much prized for local consumption. The tobacco of export is grown in the peninsula of Jaffna. The exports of this article in 1850 were 22,176 cwts., valued at £20,698. The cultivation of the plant has not greatly increased of recent years, and is almost entirely in the hands of natives in the northern and parts of the central Province.
Ceylon has been celebrated since the middle of the 14th century for its cinnamon, and during the period of the Dutch occupation this spice was the principal article of commerce; under their rule and up to 1832 its cultivation was a government monopoly. With the abolition of the monopoly the quantity exported increased, but the value declined.
Unlike the coffee plant, the hardy tea plant grows from sea-level to 7000 ft. altitude; but crown forest-lands above 5000 ft. are no longer sold, so that a very large area on the highest mountain ranges and plateaus is still under forest. Moreover, on the tea plantations arboriculture is attended to in a way unknown in 1875; the Australian eucalypts, acacias and grevilleas, Indian and Japanese conifers, and other trees of different lands, are now freely planted for ornament, for protection from wind, for firewood or for timber. A great advance has been made at Hakgalla and Nuwara Eliya, in Upper Uva, and other high districts, in naturalizing English fruits and vegetables. The calamander tree is nearly extinct, and ebony and other fine cabinet woods are getting scarce; but the conservation of forests after the Indian system has been taken in hand under a director and trained officers, and much good has been done. The cinnamon tree (wild in the jungles, cultivated as a shrub in plantations) is almost the only one yielding a trade product which is indigenous to the island. The coco-nut and nearly all other palms have been introduced.
Among other agricultural products mention must be made of cacao, the growth and export of which have steadily extended since coffee failed. Important also is the spice or aromatic product of cardamoms.
The culture of indiarubber was begun on low-country plantations, and Ceylon rubber is of the best quality in the market. The area of cultivation of the coco-nut palm has been greatly extended since 1875 by natives as well as by Europeans. The products of this palm that are exported, apart from those so extensively used in the island itself, exceed in a good year £1,000,000 sterling in value. Viticulture and cotton cultivation, as well as tobacco growing, are being developed along the course of the new northern railway.
Taking the trade in the products mentioned as a whole, no country can compete with the United Kingdom as a customer of Ceylon. But there is a considerable trade in nearly all products with Germany and America; in cardamoms with India; in cinnamon with Spain, Italy, Belgium, Australia, Austria and France; and in one or other of the products of the coco-nut palm (coco-nuts, coco-nut oil, copra, desiccated coco-nut, poonac, coir) with Belgium, Russia, France, Austria, Australia and Holland.
Pearl Fishery.—Pearl oysters are found in the Tambalagam bay, near Trincomalee, but the great banks on which these oysters are usually found lie near Arippu, off the northern part of the west coast of Ceylon, at a distance of from 16 to 20 m. from the shore. They extend for many miles north and south, varying considerably in their size and productiveness. It is generally believed that the oyster arrives at maturity in its seventh year, that the pearl is then of full size and perfect lustre, and that if the oyster be not then secured it will shortly die, and the pearl be lost. It is certain that from some unexplained cause the oysters disappear from their known beds for years together. The Dutch had no fishery from 1732 to 1746, and it failed them again for twenty-seven years from 1768 to 1796. The fishery was again interrupted between 1820 and 1828, also from 1833 to 1854, from 1864 to 1873, and again from 1892 to 1900. The fishery of 1903 was the first since 1891, and produced a revenue of Rs. 829,348, being the third largest on record. In 1797 and 1798 the government sold the privilege of fishing the oyster-beds for £123,982 and £142,780 respectively. From that time the fishery was conducted by the government itself until 1906, when it was leased to the Ceylon Pearl Fisheries Company for twenty years at a rent of £20,000 a year. Professor Herdman, F.R.S., was appointed to inquire and report on the conservation and cultivation of the Ceylon pearl-oyster, and visited Ceylon in January 1902. In consequence of his report, a marine laboratory for the culture of the pearl oysters was established in Galle harbour under the care of Mr Hornell.