NOTICE. THE Council of the Statistical Society of London wish it to be under- LONDON: PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SON, ST. MARTIN'S LANE. CONTENT S. Page Contributions to the Statistics of Sugar Produced within the British Dominions in India. By LIEUT.-COLONEL W. H. SYKES, F.R.S. Agricultural Statistics of Ireland. By G. R. PORTER.. On the Relative Value of Averages derived from different numbers of Observa- .... The Influence of Subdivision of the Soil on the Moral and Physical well-being of the People of England and Wales. By JOHN BARTON, Esq.............. Railways in Prussia and other Continental States, at the close of the Year 1848. Contributed by BERNARD HEBELER, Esq., Consul-General for Prussia.... Statistics on the Manufacture of Plate Glass in Great Britain, from 1760 to 1847, with Remarks on Foreign Productions and the Export Trade. By HENRY HOWARD, Esq., Plaistow, Essex Miscellaneous Sixteenth Annual Report of the Statistical Society of London. Session 1849-50 Abstract of the Report of a Tour in the Five Departments of Brittany, during On the Fluctuations of the Annual Supply and Average Price of Corn in France, during the last Seventy Years, considered with particular reference to the political periods of 1792, 1814, 1830, and 1848. By J. T. DANSON 152 Vital Statistics of Calcutta. By DR. CUTHBERT FINCH.......... 168 Miscellaneous 183 ............ Page QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. FEBRUARY, 1850. Contributions to the Statistics of Sugar Produced within the British Dominions in India. By LIEUT.-COLONEL W. H. SYKES, F.R.S. [Read before the Statistical Section of the British Association, at Birmingham, September, 1849.] THE Chamber of Commerce in Bengal, in September 1846, applied to the Government of India to procure for them a Statistical Return of lands cultivated in Bengal and the north-western provinces for the growth of Sugar-cane or Date trees, for the production of Goor or Sugar, desiring at the same time to know the probable consumption in each district. The object of the Chamber in requesting this information was to ascertain the capabilities of the soil in India, for extending the cultivation of sugar at a cost which would enable it to compete in the home markets with the foreign slave and free labour sugar, the prohibitory duties on which were removed by 9 and 10 Vict., cap. 63. The Indian Government complied with this request, extending the application to the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay. On the receipt of the required information, the Indian Government, in 1848, caused the tabulated statements, with explanations of them, to be printed; constituting an official document. Although this document may be in the hands of interested parties in India, it has not been published in Europe, and is most probably little known. I may, therefore, be doing a certain amount of good in giving to it some publicity by submitting it to the Statistical Section in as condensed a form as is consistent with a perspicuous understanding of its details. It is not to be denied, however, that the numerous instances of estimated land under cane cultivation-estimated produce,―estimated consumption-and the marked discrepancies between these estimates, even from neighbouring districts, much more from distant parts of the country, lessen very much the value of the Returns, so that on the whole, they can only be considered as approximations to the truth: still I believe they are the only approximations we have. The document is designated "Statistics of British East India Sugar," but I cannot claim for it a better title than "Contributions to the Statistics of Sugar produced in India." Sugar in India is produced from several sources: the sugar-cane, VOL. XIII. PART I. B |