hat's your produce?' is now the first query at this season, when
planters meet. Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see how much
is being got per beegah, or how much per vat. The presses are calculated
to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a vat, some days it
will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other times it will recede
to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet weather reduces the
produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up again. Short stunted plant
from poor lands will often reduce your average per acre, to be again
sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant comes in from some favourite
village, where you have new and fertile lands, or where the plant from
the rich zeraats laden with broad strong leaf is tumbled into the
loading vat.

So far as I know, there seems to be no law of produce. It is the most
erratic and incomprehensible thing about planting. One day your presses
are full to straining, next day half of them lie empty. No doubt the
state of the weather, the quality of your plant, the temperature of the
water, the length of time steeping, and other things have an influence;
but I know of no planter who can entirely and satisfactorily account
for the sudden and incomprehensible fluctuations and variations which
undoubtedly take place in the produce or yield of the plant. It is a
matter of more interest to the planter than to the general public, but
all I can say is, that if the circumstances attendant on any sudden
change in the yielding powers of the plant were more accurately noted;
if the chemical conditions of the water, the air, and the raw material
itself, more especially in reference to the soil on which it grows, the
time it takes in transit from the field to the vat, and other points,
which will at once suggest themselves to a practical planter, were more
carefully, methodically, and scientifically observed, some coherent
theory resulting in plain practical results might be evolved.

Planters should attend more to this. I believe the chemical history of
indigo has yet to be written. The whole manufacture, so far as
chemistry is concerned, is yet crude and ill-digested. I know that by
careful experiment, and close scientific investigation and observation,
the preparation of indigo could be much improved. So far as the
mechanical appliances for the manufacture go, the last ten years have
witnessed amazing and rapid improvements. What is now wanted, is, that
what has been done f