taple crop of the province in both Upper and Lower Burma is rice. In
Lower Burma it is overwhelmingly the largest crop; in Upper Burma it is
grown wherever practicable. Throughout the whole of the moister parts of
the province the agricultural season is the wet period of the south-west
monsoon, lasting from the middle of May until November. In some parts of
Lower Burma and in the dry districts of Upper Burma a hot season crop is
also grown with the assistance of irrigation during the spring months. Oxen
are used for ploughing the higher lands with light soil, and the heavier
and stronger buffaloes for ploughing wet tracts and marshy lands. As rice
has to be transplanted as well as sown and irrigated, it needs a
considerable amount of labour expended on it; and the Burman has the
reputation of being a somewhat indolent cultivator. The Karens and Shans
who settle in the plains expend much more care in ploughing and weeding
their crops. Other crops which are grown in the province, especially in
Upper Burma, comprise maize, tilseed, sugar-cane, cotton, tobacco, wheat,
millet, other food grains including pulse, condiments and spices, tea,
barley, sago, linseed and other oil-seeds, various fibres, indigo and other
dye crops, besides orchards and garden produce. At the time of the British
annexation of Burma there were some old irrigation systems in the Kyaukse
and Minbu districts, which had been allowed to fall into disrepair, and
these have now been renewed and extended. In addition to this the Mandalay
Canal, 40 m. in length, with fourteen distributaries was opened in 1902;
the Shwebo canal, 27 m. long, was opened in 1906, and a beginning had been
made of two branches 29 and 20 m. in length, and of the Mon canal, begun in
1904, 53 m. in length. In all upwards of 300,000 acres are subject to
irrigation under these schemes. On the whole the people of Burma are
prosperous and contented. Taxes and land revenue are light; markets for the
disposal of produce are constant and prices good; while fresh land is still
available in most districts. Compared with the congested districts in the
other provinces of India, with the exception of Assam, the lot of the
Burman is decidedly enviable.

_Forests._---The forests of Burma are the finest in British India and one
of the chief assets of the wealth of the country; it is from Burma that the
world draws its main supply of teak for shipbuilding, and indeed it was the
demand for teak that larg