begun to do so already, the necessity of roads from the interior of the district to the station, and of a steamer which shall go once or twice in the year to Cachar, and bring away the tea to Calcutta. A steamer visiting Cachar in the rains, in time to fetch away the manufacture of the first half of the season, might go right up to Silchar; in the dry weather, or in November, just after the close of the manufacturing season, it would not go higher than Luckye, but to this place the remaining half of the manufacture might be transported with ease.

The risk to native boats, in the Berhampooter, is greater than that incurred in any river between Silchar and Calcutta, and the time absorbed in transit from Upper Assam to Calcutta is fully three times that occupied by boats going down from Cachar. The one steamer a-month which just manages to stagger up to Debrooghur, does little beyond tantalizing the planters of that region. They are fortunate when they can ship a fraction of their tea on board of her. By far the largest part of their manufacture is sent down in native boats. The crying want of Assam, and we may add, of Eastern Bengal, is steamers. Any Steam Company that will undertake to work the Assam line, taking in the trade that flows through Serajgunge and Naraingunge, may calculate on declaring a dividend in the very second year, perhaps the first!

We cannot close without briefly adverting to the tenure on which the planters of Assam and Cachar alike, hold their grants of land. The term of each grant is fixed for ninety-nine years. One-fourth of the land thus appropriated, being supposed to be required for the erection of houses and embankments, the construction of roads and the excavation of tanks, is to be exempted in perpetuity, from assessment. The remaining three-fourths are to be held "rent-free for fifteen years, after which the land 'shall be assessed at three annas per acre for ten years, and for seventy-four years at six annas per acre." But the 7th section of the "Rule for the grant of waste lands" provides that, "oneeighth of the grant shall be cleared and rendered fit for cultivation by the expiration of the 5th year from the

6

fourth by the expiration of the 10th year from the one-half by the expiration of the 20th year from the

18 — ; one

18 -18-;

;

and three-fourths by the expiration of the 30th year from the 18. On failure of all or any of these conditions, (the fact of which failure shall, after local enquiry conducted by the Collector or other officer, be finally determined, by the Board of Revenue,) the entire grant shall be resumed, and the grantee shall forfeit all right and interests in the lands, both those which may be yet uncleared, and those which may have been

'cleared and brought into cultivation." At the time when the planters of Assam acceded to these terms, they had had no practical experience of the working of a tea garden, nor could they foresee the difficulty that would arise from the scarcity of labourers. It was a considerable while before any part of the land became productive; and since then, so far from having labour enough to extend the gardens, it has been a matter of the greatest difficulty to get and keep up a supply sufficient for the land already under cultivation. This is the dilemma in which the planters of Assam, and Cachar too, though in a mitigated degree, find themselves at the present moment. The conditions on which they have obtained their grants, only added, till recently, to their embarrassment; for unless the proportions of cultivation brought up to the requirements of these conditions the entire grants were liable, to be resumed, and the capital spent upon them, to be absolutely and hopelessly lost. Unwilling to lay unnecessary pressure on so promising an enterprise, the Lieutenant Governor, to whom the present position of the planters was described by a deputation, has given them the assurance that he will not enforce the conditions of the 7th section. The conditions have not, however, been withdrawn ; and to obviate all future difficulties, the authorities of Assam have proposed that the planters should be permitted to redeem the tax upon their lands. They have suggested that if the planters paid at the rate of Rupees 2-8 an acre, in plots of not less than five hundred acres at a time, the sum so realized, with the interest that would accumulate on it, would relieve the Government from the trouble and expense of collecting a tax spread over a period of ninety-nine years, and deliver the planters from the ever recurring dread of resumption. But better again than the redemption of the land tax, preferable as this scheme is to the existing provisions, would be the permission to purchase the fee simple of the grants. Nevertheless, important as this subject is, we decline to discuss it at present; for, we feel, and we believe many planters participate in the feeling, that its discussion will be premature until the more pressing question of labour has been successfully solved. The redemption of the land tax and the purchase of the fee simple would alike require the present outlay of a large sum of money which will be a loss to the capitalist, if in the end, he is obliged to renounce his speculations owing to the want of labourers. Upon the success of some well advised scheme for the importation of coolies, depends the question, whether Assam and Cachar are to take their place side by side with China in the tea markets of Europe

and America, or whether they must always occupy the very subordinate position that is as yet theirs.

From a table drawn up by Colonel Jenkins we learn, that if the sixty-eight tea concerns of Assam were able to render the whole extent of their grants productive, we should have 54,859, instead of 7,599 acres under cultivation and yielding tea. The province would then produce "thirty millions of pounds of tea, or about half the quantity now imported into England yearly 'from China." In Cachar there are seventeen concerns, owning forty-two gardens; but scarcely more than 4000 acres are under cultivation. What the aggregate extent of the grants is, we have not been able to ascertain. It is well known, however, that unlike the Assam Companies, there is scarcely a concern in Cachar which holds a grant of less than a thousand acres. In Assam, the cultivation covers a little more than one-seventh of the whole extent of grants; in Cachar, it covers about onethirty-seventh. But in Cachar, as Lieutenant Stewart tells us, there are yet thousands upon thousands of acres covered 'with indigenous tea," and "thousands upon thousands of acres of good lands, possessing the peculiar tea soil, upon which 'there is no indigenous tea, but which are more favourably situ

'ated."

When the difficulties which now clog the enterprise are removed; when labour is abundant, the land is secured to the capitalist, and transit is rapid, regular, and safe, neither British capital nor British energy will be wanting to make the abundance and quality of the export of our Eastern Provinces rival those of the Flowery Land. India will yet be famed as one of the World's Tea-Gardens.

Lieut. Stewart says, "upwards of 150,000 acres" have been taken up with a view to cultivation. The fact is, thousands of acres which have been bespoken by various companies and private individuals, remain altogether untouched.

ART. III.-On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. By CHARLES DARWIN, M. A., &c. &c. London: John Murray. 1859.

EX ORIENTE LUX is a motto which would be very flattering to us as orientals, if we could occasionally apply it to our literary and scientific achievements. Excluding the specialties of oriental scholarship, our legitimate claims to the distinction have not we conceive been of frequent recurrence. In our eastern land indeed our shining lights are at least of average brilliancy, but their fame does not very often reach beyond ourselves, nor do their rays penetrate far enough to frequently gain the attention of Europe. It is indeed no easy task for us to keep pace with our European contemporaries weighted as we are in the race by all the disadvantages attendant on our exotic position. That Anglo-Indians do this at least, few will venture to deny, none more readily admit than ourselves; but the subject of this article entitles us, we think, to claim a leading position, not a place in the rack, in short to appropriate, in this case, our motto. We have to call the attention of our readers to a new light which, emanating from among us, has spread its rays far and near throughout the scientific world of Europe, which has been hailed by some as piercing the clouds of ignorance and prejudice, and disclosing a new path towards truth, scouted by others as the mendacious glare of fatal error, but received by all in a way which unmistakably shews that it has commanded universal attention at least.

Our share-only a share indeed-in this success, we claim on the following grounds.

Mr. Wallace, who was then, and is we believe still, occupied in investigating the natural history of the Malay Archipelago and whose labors in India are so honorably known to naturalists, sent home some time in 1858-59 a paper, which was subsequently communicated to the Linnean Society by Sir Charles Lyell, embodying certain general conclusions on the subject of the Origin of Species suggested to him by the results of his researches in this part of Asia, and especially by his explorations of that most interesting zoological province in which he was then engaged. That paper is the first and earliest statement before the public of the new doctrines contained in Mr. Darwin's work, who states in his preface that acting by the advice of his scientific friends, he thought he could not in justice to himself any longer withhold from the public a work to the

elaboration of which he had devoted many years, and which though not yet ready for the printer, afforded him materials for the abstract forming the present volume. Nor has our eastern claim to a close connection with this new natural history theory ceased here, for Mr. Blyth, another distinguished oriental naturalist, has been for years a co-laborer with Mr. Darwin in this very field of enquiry, and is spoken of by that author in several parts of his work in terms of praise and graceful acknowledgment which, however gratifying, cannot add to the well earned, high European reputation of the curator of the Asiatic Society's Museum. Thus two naturalists, labouring among us, have contributed directly to the elaboration of the theory contained in Mr. Darwin's book, and one of them indirectly caused its publication. We must not however be understood to evince by these remarks any desire to detract either from Mr. Darwin's own merits, by mentioning thus prominently the names of two of his distinguished colleagues, nor from those of his work by bespeaking attention to its contents on grounds other than its intrinsic value. On the subject of those merits and that value there can be but one opinion. The verdict of the great tribunal of European science cannot yet be given in, but whatever that verdict may ultimately be, whether Mr. Darwin's doctrines are to revolutionize our views on the fundamental laws of natural history, or to be considered only as hypotheses serving to systematize our existing knowledge, and stimulate research, the high fame of the author, the philosophical tone which pervades every page of his book, the names of the men already ranged as adherents and opponents in the discussion to which it has already given rise, at once stamp the essay on the Origin of Species as a production of no commonplace kind.

It possesses moreover the somewhat rare advantage of treating a profoundly scientific subject in a style which renders it approachable by, and appreciable to the lay mind. The reader who may be unskilled in botany and zoology will no doubt, at the close of many of the chapters, lay down the volume with the conviction that he is unable to weigh each portion of the evidence adduced, that he cannot assign to every fact the ex. act amount of importance to which it may be entitled in the argument, on which its bearing may be of the most complicated kind and he will thus feel himself deprived of the pleasure of giving an unreserved assent to the propositions to which Mr. Darwin appends his Q. E. D.; but he can judge of the use made of those arguments and of the treatment of those facts, and he can exercise his judgment on the logic SEPTEMBER, 1860.

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