rive, this being its native soil and climate; and
the experiments I have successfully made, go to support me in the
opinion that the cultivation of indigo will bring an ample reward.
Indeed it seems contrary to the laws of nature that it should be
otherwise.

I have obtained from the 140th part of an acre the proportion of 300
lbs. of indigo per acre. That the plant will cross successfully, I
have also ascertained."

_Cultivation in India._--During the nine years which preceded the
opening of the trade with India in 1814, the annual average produce of
indigo in Bengal, for exportation, was nearly 5,600,000 lbs. But since
the ports were opened, the indigo produced for exportation has
increased fully a third; the exports during the sixteen years ending
with 1829-30, being above 7,400,000 lbs. a year.

The consumption in the United Kingdom has averaged, during the last
ten years, about 2,500,000 lbs. a year.

In 1839-40 the export of indigo from Madras amounted to 1,333,808
lbs. A small quantity is also exported from the French settlement of
Pondicherry. In 1837 the export from Manila amounted to about 250,000
lbs. The export from Batavia in 1841 amounted to 913,693 lbs., and the
production in 1843 was double that amount. The annual exports of
indigo, from all parts of Asia and the Indian Archipelago, were taken
by M'Culloch, in 1840, to be 12,440,000 lbs. The imports are about
20,000 chests of Bengal, and 8,000 from Madras annually, of which
9,000 or 10,000 are used for home consumption, and the rest
re-exported.

The total crop of indigo in the Bengal Presidency has ranged, for the
last twenty years, at from 100,000 to 172,000 factory maunds; the
highest crop was in 1845. The factory maund of indigo in India is
about 78 lbs.

In the delta of the Ganges, where the best and largest quantity of
indigo is produced, the plant lasts only for a single season, being
destroyed by the periodical inundation; but in the dry central and
western provinces, one or two _ratoon_ crops are obtained.

The culture of indigo is very precarious, not only in so far as
respects the growth of the plant from year to year, but also as
regards the quantity and quality of the drug which the same amount of
plant will afford in the same season.

The fixed capital required, as I have already shown, in the
manufacture of indigo, consists simply of a few vats of common masonry
for steeping the plant, and precipitati