COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OF INDIA. Commercial Products of India. By Sir
George Watt. (Jolla Murray. 16s. net.)—This volume is an abridgment of the " Dictionary of the Economic Products of India," but it is Asa'
of very considerable magnitude, containing as it does eleven hundred and forty-four pages, exclusive of an index of forty- three. It is difficult to give any adequate idea of its contents. It deals with the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. Live- stock of various species, as the humped ox, yak, buffalo, goat, 811001), ass, and pig ; edible birds, whether of the game kinds or not ; fishes, as the " Bombay duck," the most common sea fish, carp, trout, the climbing fish and the walking fish (two kinds of great vitality), are the most prominent of the animal kingdom. Salt may be described as the most important, from the com- mercial point of view, of the mineral products. The annual consumption in India may be put at about two million five hundred thousand tons. The average price is one half- penny per pound, and the tax brings in a revenue of between live and six million pounds sterling. About two-thirds of the total quantity is obtained from sea-water. There is a consider- able import from England. In the matter of revenue it may be observed that what the Indian peasant pays in the enhanced price of his salt—and he gets it cheaper than we do here—is often his sole contribution to the revenue, not amounting to more than fourpenee annually. Can Indian revolutionaries point to a golden age in the past when he paid less P The vegetable products are numerous beyond calculation, and there is scarcely one of them about which the reader will not find some interesting information.
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