exempt from, the succession is rendered incomplete,
and the consequence is that the annual produce of
each district fluctuates, and is greater or less in
the proportion of the quantity of bearing vines to
the whole number. To enter minutely into the
detail of this business will not afford much information
or entertainment to the generality of readers, who
will however be surprised to hear that pepper-planting,
though scarcely an art, so little skill appears to
be employed in its cultivation, has nevertheless been
rendered an abstruse science by the investigations
which able men have bestowed upon the subject.
These took their rise from censures conveyed for supposed
mismanagement, when the investment, or annual provision
of pepper, decreased in comparison with preceding years,
and which was not satisfactorily accounted for by unfavourable
seasons. To obviate such charges it became necessary
for those who superintended the business to pay attention
to and explain the efficient causes which unavoidably
occasioned this fluctuation, and to establish general
principles of calculation by which to determine at
any time the probable future produce of the different
residencies. These will depend upon a knowledge
of the medium produce of a determinate number of vines,
and the medium number to which this produce is to
be applied; both of which are to be ascertained only
from a comprehensive view of the subject, and a nice
discrimination. Nothing general can be determined
from detached instances. It is not the produce
of one particular plantation in one particular stage
of bearing and in one particular season, but the mean
produce of all the various classes of bearing vines
collectively, drawn from the experience of several
years, that can alone be depended on in calculations
of this nature. So in regard to the median number
of vines presumed to exist at any residency in a future
year, to which the medium produce of a certain number,
one thousand, for instance, is to be applied, the
quantity of young vines of the first, second, and third
year must not be indiscriminately advanced, in their
whole extent, to the next annual stage, but a judicious
allowance founded on experience must be made for the
accidents to which, in spite of a resident’s
utmost care, they will be exposed. Some are lost
by neglect or death of the owner; some are destroyed
by inundations, others by elephants and wild buffaloes,
and some by unfavourable seasons, and from these several
considerations the number of vines will ever be found
considerably decreased by the time they have arrived
at a bearing state. Another important object
of consideration in these matters is the comparative
state of a residency at any particular period with
what may be justly considered as its medium state.
There must exist a determinate proportion between
any number of bearing vines and such a number of young
as are necessary to replace them when they go off
and keep up a regular succession. This will depend