TAA Scottish Branch meeting at CTVM, Bush, 20th December 1999

ProfessorN.W.Simmonds addressed 10 members of the Scottish Branch of the TAA on the subject of ‘The Early Literature of Agricultural Research’. The speaker said that by ‘earlier’ he meant literature that went back or referred into the 19th century. Thus the African Journals and books mentioned by Masefield (1972) would not appear, despite having some very good entries. The sources to be treated were therefore essentially Asian and American (i.e. West Indies).

|Essentially there are two good reasons to read the older literature. First, it not infrequently anticipates later researches and, second, historical understanding is always good to have, however rare. The reading upon which this talk is based was done in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh, where I have had many helpful courtesies from the librarians of both places. Readers should recall that there must have been significant items that remained unseen and that the field treated is essentially the West Indies and India.

There are six general points to make, as follows:

To start with one of the most distinguished, though not the longest run, there was the great West Indian Bulletin (London and Barbados, 1899-1921): 19 volumes of several hundred pages each! It borrowed extensively (and wisely) from West Indian publications, especially of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and British Guiana (now the Republic of Guyana). Much space was devoted to the great John Bovell and sugarcane; breeding and technology were prominent (it was still the era of the ‘Nobles’, modern hybrid canes entering the industry in the 1930s, notably at first B 37161, bred by MacIntosh). Harland’s early papers (1915 onwards) on cotton breeding started an important new field of work.

Early Jamaican ventures with bananas (i.e. late 1890s onwards) were recorded. Rice in British Guiana was an excellent success from 1901 (earlier than I had thought). Cocoa became a major Trinidad product, especially encouraged by the great J.H. Hart. A Kew man and Director of the Gardens. Hart was also an excellent protagonist of clones, decades before the rest of the world saw the point (they still don’t). Introduction of Witchbroom disease from Surinam in 1900 was recorded, a major nuisance down to the present (but over-rated as a plant disease). Ventures in forestry and tea were recorded (teak becoming a roaring success). Trinidad is not a tea place and the only coffee it can grow is poor non-arabica stuff. The splendid little ‘Badian’ Blackbelly sheep was farmed (very justifiably – it not only tastes good, it has litters of lambs). There was some veterinary and animal pathology material, signalling the introduction of ill-adapted foreign kinds of stock.

The Bulletin of the Trinidad Royal Botanic Gardens had a good run from 1887 (or perhaps earlier) to 1908. Despite the title, contents were mostly economic. The great J.H Hart was editor until retirement in 1908, promoting cocoa, as ever. In the early days, Castilla was preferred to Hevea as ‘the Rubber Tree’ but the latter became established as superior, after the ‘boom’ of 1906. Propagation of timbers, cocoa, mango and coffee were treated, as were the abundant merits of the piwa or peach palm (pejibaye in Spanish), Guilielma (Bactris) speciosa, a splendid plant but still sadly neglected.

A marvellous array of miscellaneous topics drew comment in 1902-1903 (in an RBG Bulletin!): birds, pineapples, malaria, bees, logwood, cotton seed (uses of), mole crickets, citrus, durian, yams, dates and ensilage. Jamaica banana successes were recorded and River Estate was turned over from cane to cocoa (which still grew there in my younger days). In 1904-05 Hart did a notable early nutrient balance calculation: he reckoned that a 35 M lb of Trinidad crop had 5.2 K lb of phosphorus or 230 t of phosphoric acid. He knew that P _(in) > P _(out) so fertilizer needs could be calculated. This was the earliest tropical balance sheet I have seen. Hart retired in 1908, the year that F.A. Stockdale (later Sir Frank) did a notable review of coconut diseases. Hevea was finally recognized as the best rubber tree. Under Kew stimulus, a Trinidad Flora was projected and begun but is today (1999) still incomplete.

The Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture, Jamaica (1903-1918) was edited by W.H. Fawcett of banana fame. Tea had been tried in the hills(Blue Mountains) back to 1771 and quinine in 1869 (promoted by the India Office for India). Cane was in decline and remained so until later. There was much on animals in the early days, even on horse breeding and tanning hides. Cocoa was strongly favoured; seedlings should be pruned back to ‘gormandizers’ (=chupons), then, but not later. A huge range of crop topics was treated, including papaw, potato (a successful crop in time), breadfruit (a vast review), tobacco and even vines (some of which grew very well). The early banana trade and its diseases (including Banana Disease or Wilt) were well covered.

There was reference to nitrification in soils (1909) and K-deficiency in bananas was predicted (quite correctly – I had a hand in diagnosing it in the 1940s and later estimated the ‘life’ of Central American alluvia from K contents. I wished that I had read these excellent bulletins years before).

Hope Gardens were started in 1874 under Robert Thomson and did excellent work (as did the St Clair Garden in Trinidad). Coffee, cassava, Calathea, Tania, and various rubbers (including the tricks of Hevea seed) provoked excellent articles.

British Guiana (now simply Guyana) has a very attractive garden but never, I think a Bulletin. Instead it had an admirable society for general Guianese studies called The Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana (1882-1912 but with a rather confused bibliography). The underlying society was founded by a Scots lawyer, W.H. Campbell in 1844 but the journal began in 1882 under the editorship of the distinguished German immigrant scholar E.F.imThurn. He said (1882) that Timehri was an Amerindian name for the country, transcribed from a stone inscription, but without explanation of who wrote it or who read an unwritten tongue. The range of the journal was indeed huge and little was borrowed; one also gets the impression that it was rarely seen or read outside BG.

The Journal does not go far back in date and one has to remember that a good deal of the country was unexplored until well into the nineteenth century; the great name in that context was, of course, Sir Richard Schomburg who did much good field botany, as well as exploring, during his vast travels in 1835-44.

Contents referred to balata (Mimusops, a very hard timber), sugar cane processing, gold mining, travels in general, climbing Mt Roraina, shooting (but not, alas, fishing, despite the wonderful lukanani), the Barbadian dialect of English (sociology, but not socio-garbage). The 1912 issue was the ‘Colony Issue’, emphasizing the railway, begun in 1846 as the Demerara Railway Company. It aimed at a single 1 m gauge to meet all its neighbours but somehow finished up with three. I can remember the last bit of it running to the coastal sugar estates in the later 1960s. All has now gone I think, like all the West Indian railways. I had frequent rides on the old Trinidad line and once even crossed Jamaica to get a banana boat on the North Coast.

The longest and most impressive run of any tropical or subtropical agricultural journal was that of the Transactions of the Agri-Horticultural Society of India (under diverse titles; Calcutta, 1838-1937). The contents cover a vast field and even to scan the run is a major task. However, some generalizations are possible, as follows.

So far I have been writing of runs of journals, mostly quite short but one very long one. All have good stuff in them. In this section I want simply to mention a few key bits of the literature which cannot properly be left out.

First, there was the Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya (1901-32). I have not seen a complete set but what I have seen was not exciting for the economic botanist. There were large chunks of formal taxonomy of Podostemonaceae and such exciting plants, essays on plant breeding and rubber in Asia, bamboo flowering and phases of the moon. J.C. Willis, R.H. Lock and T. Petch were prominent early contributors.

Second, one can hardly imagine the great Indian development without the East India Company (founded 1600). It was at first simply a Royal Trade Monopoly but was quickly forced into military and political adventures, not all of them wise, but in total highly successful. Important functions were to contain Dutch and French power in Asia, as well as develop peaceful trade in India and keep control of the China-England tea trade. It grabbed Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1796, was reduced to ‘Agency’ status in 1834 and dissolved by the Imperial Government in 1873. This is no place for a history of the ‘John Company’ though; the reader will find an excellent short treatment in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Third, Indian public affairs were in some disorder in the 1920s, so a Royal Commission on Agriculture was set up. It reported in five volumes in 1926-28. Its report was superbly well composed and written and, more than any other element, was responsible for the unification of the Indian Agricultural Research and Development under the IARC. Incidentally, the report displayed excellent Farming Systems understanding, decades before FSR became CG-fashionable (to coin a phrase).

Fourth, Sir George Watt’s great Dictionary of the Commercial Products of India (1889-90), in ten volumes (Calcutta and London), is perhaps the greatest compilation of its kind ever achieved. All products, not only agricultural, were represented. Some crops unimportant in India are sketchily done (e.g. cocoa, bananas) but this is hardly surprising. The great achievement is the range and depth of what is done.

Fifth, G.B. Masefield’s History (1972) is a very useful short compilation which does not, of course, touch India, however good on strictly colonial territories.

Sixth, there are two competing histories of Kew of uneven quality. Brockway’s (1979) work is somewhat eccentric, politically correct and anti-colonial. She even managed to discover a dark Anglo-German plot to grow sisal in Tanzania. Desmond’s (1995) book is much the better, though he was less concerned with tropical outcomes. In these columns I have myself (Simmonds, 1991) tried to relate Kew activities to tropical agriculture in general.

Tate (1996) offers an excellent history of Malaysian agriculture, a much more variegated mixture than I had imagined.

I could not resist the temptation to include Warren Dean’s splendid work on the Brasilian Atlantic forests, as dreadful a cautionary tale as one can imagine. The same author did an excellent history of Brasilian rubber (another gruesomely cautionary tale) in 1987.