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George Davidson 1825-1911

THE

CLIMATE AND RESOURCES

OF

UPPER INDIA

AND

SUGGESTIONS FOE THEIE IMPEOVEMENT.

liY

A. F./9,()BJBETT, Lieut.-Col,
Bengal Staff Coeps.

LONDON:

W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE.

1874.
[all eights eeseeted.]

WYMAN AND SONS,

LAW AND GENERAL PRINTERS,

GREAT QUEEN STEEET, W.C.

\$2£ ~ 1911

(a&^ajl-

PREFACE.

npHIS book treats more particularly of the British pos-
sessions in Upper India, and is an attempt to show how
the climate may be improved and the resources developed. If
the suggestions here made are effectual in Upper India, they
may also be of use in many other parts of the world where
the climate is divided into dry and wet seasons, or which are
liable to periods of drought.

A. F. CORBETT.

M£78480

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

Microsoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/climateresourcesOOcorbrich

CLIMATE AND RESOURCES

OF

UPPER INDIA.

Upper India, or the Provinces under the Governments of the

North- Western Provinces, the Punjab, and Oude, lies chiefly

between the parallels of 25° and 33° of North Latitude, and

between 70° and 80° of East Longitude, which limits it crosses

diagonally from south-east to north-west.

The climate is divided into three well-defined seasons, —

the rains, the cold weather, and the hot weather. The rains

commence about the 15th or 20th of June, and last for about

three months, till the 15th or 20th of September; commencing

earlier and ending somewhat later in the south-eastern districts

than in those more to the north-west. The temperature in

the shade in the daytime during the rains may range from

85° to 90° or 95° Fahrenheit. The rainfall varies much in

different localities; there is a greater precipitation about

Benares and the eastern districts than the average, but the

greatest occurs in the Teraee, or forest, at the foot of the

Himalayas, and on the southern slopes of the Himalayas.

The rainfall at Nynee Tal often exceeds one hundred inches

in the year ; and the rainfall at the foot of the hills under that

station is about equal to, and sometimes exceeds, the rainfall

at Nynee Tal. The annual average rainfall in the Dooab, or
— £.

c B

2 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

country between the Ganges and the Jumna, may be about
twenty -four inches, a greater precipitation occurring in those
districts nearer the hills. There is also a greater rainfall in
Oude and Rohilcund, lying north of the Ganges, than in the
Dooab. The least rainfall is about Mooltan, in the Punjab,
where sometimes not more than five or six inches fall in the
year.

For a month after the cessation of the rains the atmosphere
is clear, and there is a bright hot sun, which quickly dries
up much of the moisture left in the surface-soil, which was
deposited in the rains.

About the commencement of November the cold weather
may be considered to set in, when the plains of Upper India
are favoured with about four months of clear, braciug weather,
with often sharp frosts in the mornings, particularly pleasant
and well suited to Europeans; but these frosts, which are
more severe and frequent than formerly, are injurious to the
country agriculturally ; as various food-plants, particularly the
arhar, are now more frequently killed by the frost than was
formerly the case. The usual winds during the cold weather,
i.e. from November to the end of February, are west, or from
a few points north of west ; and east winds are rare, except
with a cloudy sky. It is generally said, the east winds in
Upper India bring clouds ; but it seems doubtful whether the
clouds are the effect or the cause of the east winds. To this
I will hereafter refer.

During the cold weather some rain generally falls, mostly
in the months of December and January ; the average cold-
weather rainfall being from two to four or five inches, more
usually falling in the Punjab, and to the west, than in the
eastern parts of Upper India.

In the more southern parts the cold-weather crops sown
in October and November are harvested; and in the more

UPPER INDIA. 3

northern parts are ripening in the month of March. The
winds then set in more steadily and with greater force from
the west ; and camp-life, enjoyable through the cold weather,
begins to be unpleasant from heat and its accompanying
wind and dust. This description of weather lasts, the wind
steadily day by day increasing in force, throughout the month.

Towards the end of March the heat, wind, and dust have
increased, and punkahs and tatties are required in the southern
parts of Upper India, but are not generally in use in Rohil-
cund and further to the north-west till the middle or end of
April, by which time we have the hot weather, or season of
the hot winds, which lasts through May and June, till the
commencement of the rains.

The utility of tatties, that is their cooling power, depends
on the evaporation, caused by the hot dry winds, of water
thrown on them ; and as they are only used when the heat is
unbearable without them, the hot weather, or season of the
hot winds, may be considered well commenced from the time
tatties are brought into use.

The chief characteristic of the hot winds is that they are
westerly, that they mostly get up from about 8 to 10 a.m.,
some three or four hours after sunrise, when the surface of
the country has become heated by the rays of the sun ;
they are at their greatest force about 2 or 3 p.m., after which
they gradually decrease, as the direct incidence of solar heat
on the surface of the country decreases, and generally die
away about or shortly after sunset.

The nights during the season of the hot winds are generally
calm, and it is not uncommon to have a slightly clouded sky
and light east winds in the mornings. This, however, is
more frequent in the more eastern parts, while further to the
north-west the hot west wind sometimes continues through

the night.

b 2

4 CLIMATE AND EESOURCES OF

As Upper India lies between the parallels of 25° and 33° N.,
and the north-east trade-winds extend as far north as 30°,
the prevalent winds to that degree of latitude should be east,
and not west, were there not local causes at work acting ad-
versely; and the winds north of the parallel of 30° should
be more variable, and not so persistently from the west as
they now are.

The fact of these hot west winds getting up daily shortly
after sunrise, their period of greatest intensity being about
2 or 3 p.m., and their gradual decrease after that time till
about sunset, when they die away, points to solar heat as the
cause of their origin.

Solar heat is considered to be the primary cause of all
winds, and we have merely to consider the causes which in
Upper India tend to make the wind a west wind, and thus
contrary to the direction of the trade- winds, in whose course
Upper India lies.

We know that heated air expands and ascends, and its room
is taken up by cooler, denser air, which rushes into its place
to preserve an equilibrium, and to fill what would otherwise
be a vacuum ; or it may be that the cooler, denser air, by its
greater specific gravity, sinks and spreads over the ground,
forcing the lighter air to ascend. The result is the same, — a
rush of air, i.e. a wind. The draught in an ordinary fire-
place is caused by the expansion and ascension of the air over
the fire as it becomes heated. The ascension is due to cooler,
denser air sweeping along the floor, and displacing by its
greater gravity the air over the fire as it becomes heated and
is lighter. The histories of all large fires, from that of London
to that of Chicago, state that there has been a wind during
the time the fire was raging; but it is not always clear that
there was a wind previous to the breaking out of the fire.
The ascension of the heated air in these cases, or rather the rush

UPPER INDIA. O

of cooler denser air, to displace the lighter heated air, creates
a large indraught, or, in other words, constitutes a wind.

The alternations of sea and land breezes which daily occur
on the seashore, more particularly in tropical climates, and
which moderate the heat of the climate, are an apt illustration
of the influence of the sun in causing wind. As the land be-
comes heated with the rays of the sun, the air hanging over
it becomes heated, and a rush of cooler air from the sea — the
sea-breeze — takes place, which displaces the air heated by
contact with the land, which rises. At night, on the contrary,
as the land cools by radiation, the air in contact with it
becomes cooler and heavier, and, by its greater specific
gravity, sinks down to, and spreads over the sea, the water
of which is not cooled by radiation to the same extent as the
land, and displaces the warmer air resting on its surface.
This is the land-breeze. The sea-breeze should, according to
this theory, be stronger on the shore of a bare stony country,
and the land-breeze stronger on the shore of a country well
covered with vegetation. Whether such has, by observation,
been found to be the case, I do not know.

The air of a country is not heated to any extent by the
passage of the rays of solar heat through it, but by their
coming in contact with the surface of the land, or objects on it.
The air obtains its heat from contact with heated objects, the
chief of which is the surface of the land ; and is never so hot in
the hottest days as the object from which it obtains its heat.

As the earth revolves on its axis, the eastern parts of a
country are first presented to the influence of, and are heated
by the rays of the sun. The air in contact with the soil will
become heated and lighter, and cooler, denser air will, from
its greater specific gravity, rush in and displace it, and cause
it to ascend. As the land further to the west has been some-
what cooled down by radiation and the absence of solar heat

6 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP

during the night, and its superincumbent air has also become
cooled, the air from that direction will, from its greater
gravity, rush towards the east, and displace that which has
become heated and is lighter; and thus we have west winds.

In a former paragraph, alluding to the general opinion that
east winds in Upper India bring clouds, I said it seemed
doubtful whether the clouds were the effect or the cause of
the east winds. It appears to me highly probable that clouds
caused by some meteorological disturbance having prevented
the falling of the sun's rays on the soil, and hindered its
becoming heated, have thus diminished the causes giving rise
to the west winds, and we have, in consequence, a restoration
of the normal north-east trade-winds. This seems the more
probable, as, when a hailstorm or fall of rain occurs during
the season of the hot winds, over a considerable tract of
country, during the time the land is wet, and while there is
great evaporation from the surface, we have east winds. In
this case the vapour in the air, from evaporation, arrests the
rays of the sun, and the surface is cooled by evaporation going
on upon it. Thus it appears that while the causes producing
the west winds, the chief of which I consider to be the heat-
ing of the surface, are in abeyance, the normal north-east
trade- winds resume their sway. During the hot weather the
thermometer often rises during the day to from 120° to 130°
Fahrenheit in the shade, and all nature suffers. All wood-
work exposed to the dry, hot air warps and splits, and
speedily goes to rack and ruin.

It is generally acknowledged that the heat of Upper India
has very much increased of late years, and various facts seem
to show that such is the case. Early in the present century
it was considered by the English residents in India unhealthy
to use punkahs at night, and many did not do so. Now their
use at night is universal.

UPPER INDIA. 7

It has been brought forward as a proof of a want of inven-
tive faculty in our predecessors in India, that they were content
with the hand punkah of the country which was in use amongst
the natives, and did not invent the punkah now in use, which
is suspended from the ceiling, for a number of years after
we had obtained possession of the country. It appears to me
that the suspended punkahs not being invented was probably
owing to the fact that they were not required; the climate
being cooler, the old hand punkahs were sufficient, and there
was no urgent necessity for the suspended punkahs. As soon
as the necessity arose, from increased heat of the climate, the
suspended punkahs would be invented. Previous to their
invention, punkahs could hardly have been used in bedrooms.
Thermantidotes now in general use were not known fifty years
ago. The first description we have of one was by Dr. Eanken,
and was published with drawings in the Transactions of the
Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, in 1827. Punkahs
were, I believe, first allowed in barracks for European troops
in 1849, previous to which they were not considered neces-
sary. I never used a punkah in my house before 1850 or
1851, and know many persons who did not use them at that
time.

New barracks have been built throughout the country,
mostly since 1857, giving much greater accommodation for the
troops, and built on improved principles and better ventilated,
built expressly for coolness ; but they are described as unbear-
ably hot, and now it is proposed to increase the number of
hill stations, and keep as many of the European troops as
possible in the hills. This is all very well as regards the
infantry, but the cavalry and artillery cannot be kept in the
hills. There are other Europeans too whose duties tie them
to the plains, and who cannot get to the hills for the hot
weather. All Government officials must keep to their posts,

8 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

and so must Europeans in the employment of railways, &c. ;
for instance, the engine-drivers, whose duties perhaps require
them to be more exposed than any other class of Europeans
in India.

The new barracks are, as I said, unbearably hot ; we cannot
of course now say whether such buildings would have been
so thirty or fifty years ago, when European troops lived in
barracks of a very much inferior description, or what are now
considered so ; but there may be some of the old barracks in
existence in which European troops formerly lived, and if they
are now unfit for Europeans to live in, it is strong presumptive
proof that the climate has become hotter and deteriorated.

Cooling apparatus is now being fitted to the railway carriages
in Upper India, it being found that numerous deaths occurred
from heat apoplexy, which the new appliances are to prevent.
The cost of heat from an £. s. d. point of view, i.e. the amount
of money annually spent in contrivances to mitigate it, must
amount to a large sum, and is increasing.

The question of stationing more European troops in the hills
has been more prominently brought forward as the climate has
become hotter. They are to be sent to the hills to be away from
the heat. The expense of providing accommodation for them
in the hills will be great in the first instance, and the effects
may be injurious in many ways to the country, and, after all,
the British soldier in general prefers the plains, notwithstanding
the drawbacks and inconveniences occasioned by the heat. I
hope, however, to show how the heat of Upper India can be
mitigated, and the climate so improved that there shall be no
cause for removing the European troops from the plains, where
they are more wanted. Supposing hill stations were made, it
is as well to consider what would be the result of stationing a
greater number of European troops in the hills. The sites of
the stations will have to be cleared for barracks and parade-

UPPER INDIA. 9

grounds, and the forests in their neighbourhood will be cut
down as fuel : this will create greater surface-drainage.

The destruction caused by inundations in the valley of the
Ardeche, the Po, and other European rivers, is attributed to
increased surface- drainage, caused by cutting down the forests
near their sources ; and will not increased surface- drainage,
caused by felling the forests in the Himalayas, lead to like
disastrous consequences ? The floods in the valley of the
Sutlej, which carried away the railway bridge between
Phillor and Loodianah, may probably be a result of cutting
down the forests in the hills near the sources of this river,
for timber for stations in the Punjab, &c.

In the hills, where the surface-soil is generally light vege-
table soil formed of decomposed leaves, overlying rock, it is
easily washed away ; and any attempts to reclothe such pre-
cipitous hillsides with forest growth would be futile. It is,
perhaps, enough to state here that Marsh, in his book " Man
and Nature," gives instances where whole districts have been
ruined and depopulated from the felling of forests on hill-
sides. Is it even possible that the forests on the hills in
India can be cut down without similar results ? Do we not
see in hill stations in India landslips occurring in every direc-
tion, the result of cutting down the trees, or man's inter-
ference in some way with the natural surface and slope of the
land ? The case is different where tea or other plantations
are formed, as here, if properly managed, attempts would be
made to prevent loss of water by surface- drainage and wash-
ing away of the soil.

It is during the hot weather, the season of the hot winds,
when we have this intense heat, that we hear of sunstroke
and heat apoplexy.

Now sunstroke does not appear to be caused by the inci-
dence of the direct rays of the sun alone, but by that com-

10 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

bined with a high temperature of the surrounding air, as we
find that during the hot weather, when Europeans cannot
expose themselves to the sun without imminent danger of
sunstroke in the plains, they can and do in the hills (where
the direct rays of the sun are actually hotter, from the more
rarefied state of the air, than in the plains) expose themselves
and take violent exercise, play at cricket, &c, with perfect
impunity, because the surrounding air is cooler.

Heat apoplexy appears to be suffocation from excessive
heat. The cases of it mostly occur in the evening, often after
sunset. It is hardly known in Southern India and Bengal,
and is most prevalent in the hottest and driest parts of Upper
India. Deaths from this cause are steadily increasing. The
natives say it was almost unknown amongst them in Eohil-
cund some years ago, but now numerous deaths occur from it
there. These deaths being due to great heat, the increased
number of deaths from this cause may be taken as another
circumstance showing that the heat of the climate has in-
creased.

During the hot weather numbers of cattle die of starvation,
finding hardly any herbage to eat, or are reduced to little
more than skeletons, and feed chiefly on the leaves of trees,
which they crop from the lower branches within their reach,
or are broken from the higher branches, and thrown down to
them by their attendants. The trees themselves suffer : their
growth is arrested, the leaves wither and fall, and in a season
hotter than usual the bark shrivels and cracks in all directions,
from the intense heat and dryness of the air, as if scorched
by fire, and the trees dry up and die.

This is no exaggerated picture. I saw numbers of trees of
as much as one to two feet in diameter, which were killed in
this way by heat, in 1868 and 1869, in the Budaon district,
and many more trees which lost large branches, killed by the

UPPER INDIA. 11

same cause. I have since then seen more trees killed by the
dry heat, but 1868 was the first year in which I noticed it,
and it was talked of amongst the natives as something pre-
viously unknown in Rohilcund.

The damage done in this way is increased by the wind,
which, by bringing fresh particles of dry air continuously
into contact with the leaves, causes greater evaporation from
them; and we see its effects in the more drooping and
withered appearance of the leaves of trees and vegetables in
the evening of a windy day than in the evening of a still day.

The manner in which hot dry air kills trees is plain.
When the daily evaporation of moisture from the leaves
exceeds the amount of moisture a tree can daily take up by
its roots, the tree must wither and die. This is merely a
case of daily expenditure exceeding daily income, when the
principal has to be encroached on, and bankruptcy occurs, —
the principal in the case of a tree being its normal amount of
sap. It depends, then, on the amount of moisture in the
ground within reach of the roots of a tree, and the capability
of the roots for pumping it up, whether the tree will suffer or
not from evaporation caused by a dry, hot air. In the cases
of the trees killed by heat in the Budaon district in 1868 and
1869, it is remarkable that the trees so killed were mostly
on low-lying lands, and invariably on land with a hardened
surface-soil. On the higher land, with a loose, sandy surface-
soil, I saw no trees killed by the heat. If we dig into these
soils, we soon discover the reason. Beneath the land with the
hardened, compacted soil we find next to no moisture, while
beneath the loose, sandy surface-soil we meet with a much
larger amount of moisture present in the subsoil.

Heat and moisture are necessary for vegetation ; and we
find that the most luxuriant and rank vegetation occurs in
those parts of the world where great heat and moisture are

12 CLIMATE AND RESOUECES OF

combined. But where there is heat without moisture, or
rather with a minimum amount of moisture, as in the Sahara
and other deserts, no vegetation, or next to none, exists, or
can exist. The dry heat of these deserts, and of Upper India
during the hot season, very much exceeds that of any country
where there is a great amount of vegetation. Of two countries
lying under the same degree of latitude, the one well covered
with forests and vegetation, and the other devoid of vegeta-
tion, the summer heat of the latter will greatly exceed that of
the former. The heat of the plain of the Amazon river — a
country covered with forests — is said to be sometimes as high
as 106° Fahrenheit in the shade, on the equator, for two
hours in the day, from 2 till 4 p.m., when the sun is near the
line. This is considered the greatest heat known in a forest-
covered country, with consequently a damp climate ; and
here, also, is the richest, or rather rankest vegetable growth
in the world, the result of great heat and moisture com-
bined.

Other conditions being equal, a difference of *9 of a degree
of heat, Fahrenheit, is considered the allowance that should
be made between any two places for every degree of latitude
difference there may be in their geographical positions, in
computing their mean temperature. Then, as Upper India lies
between the parallels of 25° and 33° N., its mean temperature,
according to its geographical position, should be from 22*5
to 29' 7 Fahrenheit lower than places on the equator; instead
of which, if we examine a climatological chart, giving the
isothermal lines, we find the line of greatest mean heat runs
through Upper India ; and only in Upper India and in Africa
does the line run to the north of the tropic of Cancer.

In Africa the cause is the Sahara. In Upper India the
whole country, during April, May, and June, is virtually a
desert ; and it is the great heat generated by it during these

UPPER INDTA. 13

months which causes the line of greatest mean heat to recede
so far from the equator.

The excessive heat of the plains of Upper India is, then, not
due to their geographical position, but is in opposition to the
laws of nature as regards the effect of latitude on climate ; and
I will endeavour to point out to what circumstances this
great heat may be attributed.* Firstly, the excessive heat is
due to bare plains, the surfaces of which becoming heated,
heat the air coming in contact with them ; and this effect is
intensified by the hardened condition of the surface-soil, which
does not absorb and radiate heat, but reflects or retains it,
as rock or stone would. Secondly, it is caused by surface-
drainage, which facilitates the running-off of the rainfall, and
prevents its penetrating the soil.

The bare plains are of two descriptions, — the uncultivated
and the cultivated. The former are bare throughout the
year, except in the rains, when they may have a little grass
on them. As I shall more fully describe these uncultivated
lands (which, by the bye, are often called unculturable lands)
when I point out the causes to which they are due, I shall
say no more about them at present than that they are spread
over the whole country ; their extent and positions are laid
down in the Kevenue Survey maps ; they are attached to dif-
ferent villages — in fact, there is hardly a village which does
not possess some uncultivated land ; and these uncultivated
lands are not assessed for revenue to Government. As, how-
ever, they produce some grass in the rains, it may be to the
interest of the zemindars, when these lands have become
impoverished and only produce poor crops, to allow them to
remain uncultivated, in that case paying no revenue, to
keeping them cultivated and paying some revenue on them.

* See Appendix A, p. 101.

14 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

The cultivated lands are mainly under two descriptions of
crops, — the rain crops and the cold-weather crops.

The rain crops, sown shortly after the commencement of the
rains, are reaped in October and November. The lands occu-
pied by them are then left untouched by the plough till the
next rains, except such fields as may be required for sugar-cane,
which is planted in February or March. Should, however,
therebe more copious falls of rain than usual in the cold weather,
advantage is sometimes taken of the softened state of the soil
to plough up some of these rain-crop fields by landlords who
cultivate some of their own land, and by tenants whose tenure
insures their having the land for the following year ; but not
by ordinary tenants, who hold from year to year, know not how
long they may keep the land, and who rarely hold the same
fields two years running, but are moved from field to field at
the will of the landlord or his agent, or at their own request.

The natives are well aware of the benefits of breaking up
the soil in the cold weather, to expose it to the ameliorating
influences of air, heat, and rain ; but only a few of them are
in a condition to avail themselves of it. However, broken up,
or not broken up, with the exception of the land planted with
sugar-cane, indigo, or some such crop, the land w^hich has
borne a rain crop one year remains a bare plain throughout
the succeeding cold and hot weather. When broken up, the
physical condition of the surface- soil only is altered, and it is
rendered capable of absorbing and radiating heat ; but its
powers of absorbing and radiating heat are limited by the
shallowness of the ploughing. Still this has some effect, as
the temperature of a hot weather succeeding a cold weather,
in which more than the usual amount of rain has fallen, and
more land lias been broken up, is noticeably cooler than after
a cold season in which less rain has fallen, and less ground
has been broken up.

UPPER INDIA. 15

The cold- weather crops are sown in October and November,
and are reaped in March and April. The bulk of these crops
consists of wheat, barley, and gram (Gicer arietinum). After
these crops are reaped, the fields are left untouched by the
plough till the rains, unless wanted for indigo, when it is
slightly scratched with hoes, the seed sprinkled on the surface,
and forced into growth by irrigation. Sometimes the hoeing
of the ground even is not considered necessary, and the sur-
face is prepared for the seed by dragging a branch of a tree
over it. This shows the extent to which the natives trust to
irrigation. Where water is to be had they trust to it, and it
alone, for a crop, and neglect all other precautions, — such as
preparing a proper bed for the seed, manuring, &c.

With the exception of what small amount of land is sown
with indigo, the land occupied by the cold- weather crops is a
bare plain during the hot weather, the months of April, May,
and June, the time of greatest heat. Thus the whole of the
uncultivated land not covered with jungle, and the whole of
the cultivated land, with but trifling exceptions, are during
the hottest time of the year bare plains ; and it is well known
that wherever on the face of the earth, in tropical or sub-
tropical regions, large bare plains occur, the heat is much
more intense than where, in the same latitudes, we find
countries covered with forest growth. For instance, the
Sahara, the deserts of Arabia and Persia, and the plains of
Upper India, are notorious as being the hottest places in the
world ; and the heat of these places is universally allowed to
be the result of the incidence of the rays of solar heat on bare
plains. The heat is intensified by the hardened condition of
the surface-soil, which does not absorb and radiate heat, but
retains or reflects it, as rock or stone would. The power of
reflecting heat possessed by any object is in inverse ratio to
its power of absorption and radiation. The action of heat in

16 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

this particular seems to be almost identical with that of light.
The rougher the surface of any object, and the more irregu-
larities it possesses, the greater is its power of absorption and
radiation of heat, and the less its power of reflection. On
the other hand, the smoother and harder the surface of any
object, the greater is its power of reflection, and the less its
power of absorption and radiation.

Again, the power of retaining heat possessed by any object is
also in inverse ratio to its power of absorption and radiation ;
thus rocks and hardened baked earth, which require some
length of time to become thoroughly heated, from the great
amount of heat thrown off their surfaces by reflection, when
heated, require also a long time to cool down again. The terms
length of time and long time here used are merely compara-
tive, and are used as contrasted with the time required by
loose porous bodies to become heated or cool down again.

If we were to take two ordinary paving-flags of equal
density and similar composition, and reduce one to powder
and leave the other whole, and spread the powder resulting
from pulverization over the same extent of surface it occupied
before being reduced to powder, we should find that its
power of reflecting and retaining heat had been decreased, and
its power of absorbing and radiating heat had been increased ;
and we should have a standard to compare it with in the flag
left unbroken.

The above experiment will show the difference that takes
place in the absorptive and radiative powers, and consequently
in the powers of reflecting and retaining heat, by reducing a
stone to powder, that is by changing its density; but I have
said the stones should be of similar composition, as different
stones and soils have very different powers of absorption and
radiation, which must not be overlooked.

Marsh, in his book " Man and Nature," in a note on page

UPPER INDIA. 17

144, says, — " Composition, texture, and colour of soil are
important elements to be considered in estimating the effects
of the removal of the forest upon its thermoscopic action."
"Experience has proved," says Becquerel, "that when the
soil is bared it becomes more or less heated (by the rays of
the sun), according to the nature and colour of the particles
which compose it, and according to its humidity, and that in
the refrigeration resulting from radiation we must take into
account the conducting power of those particles also. Other
things being equal, silicious and calcareous sands, compared
in equal volumes with different argillaceous earths, with cal-
careous powder or dust, with humus, with arable and with
garden earth, are the soils which least conduct heat. It is
for this reason that sandy ground, in summer, maintains a
high temperature even during the night. We may hence
conclude that when a sandy soil is stripped of wood the local
temperature will be raised. After the sands follow succes-
sively argillaceous, arable, and garden ground, then humus,
which occupies the lowest rank. If we represent the power
of calcareous sand to retain heat by 100, we have, according
to Schubler,

For (silicious?) sand
„ arable calcareous soil
„ argillaceous earth
„ garden earth
,, humus

95-6
74-3

68-4
64-8
49-0

" The retentive power of humus, then, is but half as great
as that of calcareous sand. We will add that the power of
retaining heat is proportional to the density. It has also a
relation to the magnitude of the particles. It is for this
reason that ground covered with silicious pebbles cools more
slowly than silicious sand, and that pebbly soils are best

18 CLIMATE AND RESOUECES OF

suited to the cultivation of the vine, because they advance
the ripening of the grape more rapidly than chalky and
clayey earths, which cool quickly. Hence we see that in
examining the calorific effects of clearing forests, it is im-
portant to take iuto account the properties of the soil laid
bare." — Becquerel, " Des Climats et des Sols boises," p. 137.

In India the heating of loose sandy soil in the day and its
cooling during the night, can hardly have escaped the notice
of any one who has walked over it. Its coolness in the morn-
ing compared with that of the neighbouring fields of a more
clayey character of soil with a hardened surface, is remark-
able, and is due to its radiative power, caused by the loosened
state of division of its particles. The loose sandy soils are in
the morning often wet with dew, when there is no dew on the
hardened surface of the fields close by, showing that the
surface temperature of the former has been reduced below
dew-point, while it has not been reduced to that extent on
the latter soils.

Were the soil of the fields with the hardened surface broken
up and pulverized, it being of a more clayey nature, a better
radiator, and not so retentive of heat, its temperature would
be reduced below that of the sandy soil, and it would condense
a greater amount of dew on its surface. Again, the power
of retaining heat possessed by humus being less than that of
purely mineral soils, the greater the amount of humus incor-
porated with the soils of our fields, the greater would be their
powers of absorbing and radiating heat, and the greater the
influence they would exert in reducing the temperature of a
hot climate ; — a strong reason for burying as much vegetable
matter as possible in the soil.

If we reverse the experiment of the paving- stones and take
ordinary earth, and by moistening it and using pressure bring it
into a state as nearly as possible resembling stone, we shall find

UPPER INDIA. 19

that we have increased its reflective and retentive properties,
and reduced its powers of absorption and radiation. This oper-
ation is performed every day in brickmaking. We have only
to compare the reflective and retentive powers of sun-dried
bricks with those of the loose earth from which they were
made, and we shall find they have increased in proportion to
the increased density of the materials composing them and
the smoothness of their surfaces, and have lost in the same
proportion their powers of absorption and radiation.

Irrigation is a somewhat analogous operation. By it the
whole surface-soil is brought into the condition of sun-dried
bricks ; the more water that has been applied to the land the
harder the soil becomes, and while its powers of absorption
and radiation are reduced, those of reflection and retention
of heat are increased ; and we also find that the power of
capillary attraction possessed by the land is increased, and
that the soil so compacted will sooner become dried up than
soil left loose and open, partly from the fact of the interstices
between its particles having been reduced in size, thus in-
creasing its capillarity, and partly from the increased heat of
the surface. Notwithstanding this, the advocates of irrigation,
while allowing that the heat of Upper India has increased of
late years, deny that irrigation has had anything to do with
causing the increased heat. I do not know how they can set
aside these ordinary laws of nature, — perhaps they may be
able to explain how it is to be done.

The soil of every field becomes somewhat caked on the
surface during the growth of a crop on it, from the effects of
any rain, or the dew which may drop from the crop upon it,
and becomes hardened and dries up, from the combined
effects of direct evaporation from the surface of the soil and
the secondary effects of the evaporation from the leaves of
the crop of the moisture which it had taken up by its roots.

c 2

20 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP

The greater the amount of rainfall there has been during the
period of the growth of the crop, provided there have also
been some periods of dry, hot, sunshiny weather, the more
will the soil be caked and hardened, and the greater will be its
power of reflecting heat and the less its power of absorption
and radiation. This increased power of reflecting heat, and
decreased power of absorbing and radiating it, are brought to
a high state of perfection, and are fully developed in irrigated
lands, particularly in those irrigated from canals with an
unlimited supply of water ; for here, as in the case of rain, the
greater the amount of water supplied to the land the more will
the land become hard and consolidated. I will, as an example,
take a field of wheat. The land is prepared by being ploughed
and reploughed, or rather scarified some two or three inches
deep about ten or twelve times during the rains, and imme-
diately after they have ceased. Perhaps not so often on
canal-irrigated lands as on lands not so irrigated. The object
of these frequent ploughings or scarifyings is said to be to
bring all grass and other vegetable matter there may be in
the soil to the surface, where it is collected and often burnt,
thus further diminishing the amount of vegetable matter in
the soil. The seed is sown in the latter part of October, and
in a few days, when the blades show above ground, the field is
irrigated; the surface-soil is converted into loose mud, which,
on drying, forms a crust; this crust cracks in all directions
from the heat of the sun; the water, which had thoroughly
soaked the loosened surface-soil and only slightly moistened
the upper part of the hard pan below it, is dried up in a few
days. Having mentioned the pan, it will be as well to describe
it before proceeding further.

The pan is formed by the treading of men and cattle, and
in England the pressure of the sole of the plough has some-
thing to do with its formation ; not, however, in India, where

UPPER INDIA. 21

there is no flat sole to the plough, and the implement itself is
very light. In ploughing a piece of ground, drawing the fur-
rows six inches apart, the bullocks taking steps of two feet,
and two bullocks yoked to the plough, as is universally the
case in Upper India, there will be four footprints on every
square foot of ground every time the land is ploughed. This
is only taking into calculation the footprints of the cattle in
ploughing. This repeated every time the land is ploughed,
some ten or twelve times a year, and having gone on for ages,
must have consolidated the soil below the loosened arable
surface-soil, the more so as advantage is always taken of a
wet state of the soil for ploughing the land.

When it is required in India to make the bed of a tank
watertight, it is recommended to keep it wet and turn buffaloes
into it, as their treading effectually puddles the bed of the
tank and prevents water being lost through it by percolation.
In the same way that the treading of the bed of a tank by
buffaloes prevents escape of water, so does the treading of
cattle prevent water falling on the surface sinking to the sub-
soil. The existence of the pan is doubted by some persons,
who consider it a myth, but its reality, and its greater density,
compared with the subsoil below it, are easily proved by testing
it with water, and watching how long it requires to disappear
by absorption in the soil.

I tried with a tin tube three or four inches in diameter.
First, I had two or three inches of the surface-soil of a field
(the soil annually disturbed by the plough) scraped off. I
pressed the tube firmly on, or rather in, the soil, and poured
into it a certain amount of water. I tried again, removing twelve
and fifteen inches of the soil. This experiment was repeated
a number of times, and invariably with the same result; the
water was more quickly absorbed where I had a greater depth
of soil removed, than when only the surface-soil disturbed by

22 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

cultivation was removed; thus demonstrating the greater
density and impermeability to water of the soil immediately
below the loosened arable soil, compared with the soil at a
greater depth, which is not to so great an extent affected by
the treading of cattle on the surface. The more consolidated
soil constitutes the pan ; its greatest density is immediately
below the soil broken up mechanically in cultivation, and it
gradually decreases in density until it becomes undistinguish-
able from the natural condition of the soil below it.

To return to our wheat field. Water is again turned on,
the loose surface- soil is converted into a liquid mud, and is
carried by gravitation and deposited in the fissures made by
the heat on drying up, after it had on the previous occasion
been irrigated. This process is repeated time after time, until
every pore of the soil is plugged up, and the land becomes
almost hermetically sealed. In this state of the soil healthy
action is impossible.

The crop is reaped in March or April, when the surface- soil
presents a smooth glazed appearance, in the very best possible
physical condition for retaining and reflecting heat ; and in
the very worst possible physical condition for absorbing and
radiating heat. In fact, we have brought the soil into a
condition as much resembling stone as possible, and in this
state it remains during the hottest months of the year,
increasing the intensity of the heat, until the rains commence.

The consequence of this is, that when the soil has become
heated by the sun during the day it cannot part with its heat
at night by radiation, as a loosened soil would ; the following
day the rays of the sun fall on a still warm surface, instead of
a surface chilled by radiation, and less solar heat is required
to raise its temperature, and eventually the temperature of
the atmosphere, to a degree obnoxious both to animal and
vegetable life.

UPPER INDIA. Z6

The daily work of the sun, in the case of a country with a
hardened reflecting surface-soil, is confined to raising the
temperature of an already warm surface. No depth of soil is
heated, the whole energy of the sun's heat is expended on the
surface skin-deep.

On the other hand, when the soil is deeply broken up and
well pulverized — the mass of soil so broken up loses at night,
by radiation to the depth it has been broken up and pulverized,
the heat it acquired by absorption the previous day, — the rays
of the sun fall in the morning on a surface chilled by radiation,
and probably wet with dew, below which is a mass of soil
also chilled by radiation. The daily work of the sun, in this
case, is first to convert the dew deposited on the surface (should
dew have formed) into vapour, and afterwards to raise the
temperature of the mass of the soil as deeply as it was
pulverized and has been chilled by radiation.

A large amount of the heat of the sun will be expended in
converting the dew into vapour, and a further amount in
raising and keeping up the temperature of the mass of
loosened soil. The amount of heat that will make a reflective
surface unbearably hot will have but a slight effect in raising
the temperature of an absorbent surface, particularly when
backed up by absorbent substances; and here we have an
absorbent surface backed up by a mass of absorbent soil.
The heat of the climate of a country being obtained from and
dependent on the heat of the surface of the country, the more
we reduce the heat of the surface the more must the climate
of a country be reduced in temperature.

The following experiments show the difference between the
absorbent powers of a pulverized soil and one left hard and
compact.

On the 12th April, 1871, I found, at four p.m., in a field
which had been twice irrigated for the cold-weather crop, that

24 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

the thermometer, held two feet above the ground, stood at
100° Fahrenheit, shaded. On the surface of the ground, also
shaded, it stood at 111°; and when a hole was dug ten inches
or a foot deep, the thermometer placed in it, and covered with
an inch of the loosened soil, it went down in less than ten
minutes to 82°.

This was an imperfect experiment, because I could not
keep away the external heat whilst the soil was being dug
and broken up, still it showed a difference of 29° Fahrenheit
between the temperature of the surface and of the soil some
ten inches or at the most a foot below it. I had the hole,
which was about two feet in diameter, filled up with the soil I
had taken from it, and on the 30th April, at four p.m., I made
further trials in the same field.

On the surface of the field, and within three or four yards
of where I had made the former trial, I found the thermo-
meter, shaded, stood at 108° ; and when the soil was dug up
and tried as before, at about ten inches deep, it was 90°.
This only gave a difference of 18°, much less than in the
former trial, which I account for from the fact of numbers of
men and cattle having passed over it, it being between the
village and the threshing-floor, and by their passing and
repassing had broken up the smooth surface. At the same
time I also tested the surface, and also the soil ten inches
deep of the hole I made and had filled up on the 12th
April, and here, within three or four yards of the place where
the last experiment was made, the thermometer, shaded, but
exposed to external air, showed 102° on the loosened surface,
and also 102° ten inches below it.

In the first case, where the surface was smooth and
unbroken, the difference between heat of surface and soil ten
inches or a foot below it was 29°. In the second case, where
the surface had been broken by men and cattle walking over

UPPER INDIA. 25

it, the difference was reduced to 18°, showing the increased
absorbent power from the surface having been broken into a
layer of dust. In the third case there was no difference
between the heat on the surface and the heat ten inches or a
foot below it, but the heat of the surface was 6° lower than
that of the surrounding ground, although the hole was only
about two feet in diameter, and the heat of its surface must
have been greatly affected and raised by the surface heat of
the land around it. Still, under these adverse circumstances,
there was a reduced temperature of 6°. Were the surface of
any large extent of country broken up and pulverized, the
reduction in its surface temperature would, doubtless, be much
greater, and the temperature of the atmosphere, which obtains
its heat, by contact from the surface of the earth, and is
never so hot in the daytime as the surface of the earth, would
also be proportionately reduced.

In other trials I made I found the temperature at ten inches
or a foot below the surface, where it was hard and unbroken,
was always from 80° to 84°, but where broken, it more closely
approximated to the heat of the surface, which was invariably
below that of the surrounding unbroken land. This was the
case at all hours of the day ; and in the mornings the surface
temperature of the broken-up soil was much below that of
the unbroken surface close by, as was also the mass of soil to
the depth it had been loosened.

The experiments I made were on fields irrigated only two
or three times during the season, from wells where the water
is only scantily supplied ; had they been carried out on lands
irrigated by canals, where the water is more frequently
supplied and in greater quantity, the difference in tem-
perature between surface and subsoil would probably have
been greater in the case of fields with an unbroken surface -
soil.

26 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP

There is, however, another cause of the hardened condition
of the soil, which, as it affects, perhaps, more than anything
else the agricultural prosperity of the country, must not be
overlooked, and that is, the deficiency of vegetable matter in
it. It is this want of vegetable matter which allows the soil
to bind into a compact mass, prevents its aeration, and renders
deep cultivation more difficult.

This want of vegetable matter in the soil is caused by the
stubble of the cereals and cold weather crops being eaten down
as close as possible to the ground, the leaves of trees and
stubble of the thicker- stemmed crops, and the woody stems of
cotton and other plants, being carried off and used as fuel, as
also is all cattle-dung, which is carefully collected and dried
for that purpose, except during the rains; and any small
remains of vegetable matters there may be on the land are
carried away by surface- drainage.

The country plough, too, it must be noted, has no mould-
board, and does not invert the surface-soil, it merely scratches
it (it is not a plough, properly speaking, but merely a pointed
implement which is drawn through the soil), and does not
bury in the soil what manurial matters there may be on the
surface ; these may in the act of ploughing become mixed with
the soil to some extent, but being of less specific gravity than
the mineral soil, much is left on the surface, and is liable to
be washed away.

It is common to hear complaints of a want of manure, and
to see statements in the Indian papers to the effect that no
improvement can take place in the agriculture of Upper India
as long as cattle- dung is used as fuel, implying that cattle-
dung is the sole or chief manure, for which there is no
substitute.

The statement, however, is only partially correct. Cattle-
dung, it is true, contains all the elements of fertility required

UPPER INDIA. 27

by crops, and by using it as fuel all its organic, vegetable, or
volatile constituents, are lost for the time, and only its mineral
or non-volatile constituents remain available as manure.

Cattle-dung acts beneficially in two ways. Firstly, by sup-
plying the manurial substances required and taken up by crops
during their growth ; and secondly, by improving the physical
texture or condition of the soil, by which is meant its per-
meability to air and water. The loss by burning, as before
stated, is the organic, vegetable, or volatile matter — its woody,
and vegetable fibre and tissue — which, by incorporation with
the soil, would have improved its physical texture or condition,
have made it more open and porous, and more pervious to air
and water, from which it would have had an increased power
of abstracting fertilizing matters.

Liebig held the opinion that as long as the ashes of plants
were returned to the soil, there was no necessity for returning
to the soil the organic or volatile parts, provided the physical
condition of the soil were perfect.

When a soil is rich in the mineral ingredients required by
crops, it is probable that improving the texture of the soil by
breaking it up deeply will be of more immediate benefit to the
crops grown on it than an application of manure combined
with shallow cultivation, and this deep cultivation of the soil
might cause increased crops for years, but eventually a diminu-
tion of fertility would ensue from the abstraction from the soil
of the mineral food of plants. What is really required is a com-
bination of deep cultivation and the use of manure. Dung is
now epigrammatically described as food minus growth. Food
gains nothing by passing through the body of an animal ; on the
contrary, it passes through a course of fermentation, during
which it undergoes a loss to the extent of its constituents
taken up for the formation of the structure and increase
of the body, and to make up for daily waste of tissue, and

28 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP

to maintain animal heat in the case of young growing
animals. In the case of grown-up animals the former causes are
wanting, and the food only suffers a loss of such materials as
are required to make good daily waste of tissue and to keep
up animal heat. According to this view of the case, the dung
of grown-up animals should be of greater manurial value than
that of young animals, as less is abstracted from it ; and such
in practice is found to be the case.

Again, dung being "food minus growth," the quality of
the dung of an animal, as a manure, is dependent in a great
measure on the quality of the food supplied to it. The stomach
of an animal will only abstract from the food sufficient to make
good daily waste (except in the case of growing or fattening
animals), and should the food be rich in the constituents re-
quired for assimilation by the animal economy, the excess
will be rejected, and pass through the animal unassimilated.
On the contrary, should the food be poor in the constituents
required for assimilation, the percentage of those constituents
abstracted from it would be greater than it would be in the
case of a richer food, and the balance remaining would be
proportionately less. The constituents of the food, taken up
by animals for the nourishment of their bodies are those of
the greatest manurial value, and when an animal exists on
food from which it can barely abstract sufficient nutriment to
support life, its dung will be of the least possible value as a
manure, properly so called ; still the vegetable fibre and tissue
composing it will be valuable, as supplying a mechanical
means of improving the physical condition of the soil.

The cattle in Upper India are driven out in the mornings to
pick up what few blades of grass and leaves of trees they can,
and on returning home in the evenings, some of them may
get a small supply of chopped or broken-up straw; their
food during the drier part of the year, from January till

UPPER INDIA. 29

June, besides being limited in quantity is deficient in quality ;
and the volatile parts of their dung being almost void of
ammoniacal ingredients, can be of but little value as a manure
except so far as they would improve the texture of the soil
and make it pervious to air and water. But as dung,
after all, is only food minus growth, if we apply the food
of animals to the soil as a manure, instead of using it as
a food, we should obtain greater results, as we should be
using the whole food, instead of food minus growth, that is,
the whole, instead of a part, as manure. This system is
known as green manuring. It may appear a waste of food to
grow a crop to bury in the soil, simply as a manure for a crop
which is to succeed it ; and so, no doubt, it is, in cold and tem-
perate climates, where only one crop can be grown in a year; but
the case is different in countries like Upper India, where we
can grow tall crops as jowar (Holcus sorghum), and other rain-
plants, some five or six feet high, in two or two and a half
months from the time of sowing, and bury them in the ground
before the end of the rainy season, at a time of the year when
there is no want of food for cattle. A good crop of jowar, of
two or two and a half months' growth, may weigh from 50 to
1 00 tons per acre, so we can in this way supply that amount
of manure to the land. This manure is on the spot, and
there is no expense of carriage. Supposing 80 per cent, of
the crop to be water, it leaves in the one case ten, and in the
other twenty, tons of vegetable matters as manure, after de-
ducting the water or sap of the plants, which, however, is
useful in promoting fermentation, as also in adding so much
moisture to be buried in the soil.

It is not necessary that the crop grown to bury in the soil
should be one that might have been used for cattle-food. All
vegetable matters act as manures to the soil ; and if other
crops can be grown more economically or conveniently than

30 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

those which might have furnished cattle-food, by all means let
them be grown.

In the case of farmyard manure, composed chiefly as it is of
cattle-dung and straw, the materials for making it have first
to be carried from the field to the homestead, and then back
to the field, when wanted as a manure ; and after all it is only
the balance of the food or crop : it has been reduced both in
quantity and quality, and still its bulk and weight are the
chief obstacles to its use, as it will not repay the cost of its
carriage to any distance. Farmyard manure, too, in England,
generally contains about 70 or 80 per cent, of water. By
green manuring all this carriage is saved, the bulk and
manurial properties of the crop are not in any way impaired
or reduced, and when the crop is buried in the soil the gases
arising from its fermentation and decomposition enrich the
soil which arrests them ; and at the same time the gases, by
their chemical action, and the vegetable fibre and tissue
(which gradually decomposes and becomes humus) mechani-
cally prevent the soil binding into a hard, unyielding mass.

The only expense of green manuring is the seed required
for the crop which it is intended to use as a manure. Green
manuring is seldom practised in temperate climates, because
of the time that would be lost in growing a crop for manure.
Not having green manuring to rely on, greater care is taken
of farmyard manure, as a means of enriching the land, and
to keep it open and porous. This latter object has also been
effected by subsoil drainage.

The Chinese are said to practise green manuring to a great
extent, and to grow heavy crops of clover merely to bury as a
manure. As the Chinese are considered amongst the best
agriculturists in the world, a lesson might be taken from them
on this point, as regards a system of agriculture suited to the
climate and requirements of Upper India.

UPPER INDIA. 81

The heat and aridity of the climate of Upper India, so far as
they are due to bare plains and the hardness of the soil of the
country, will diminish in proportion to the increase of forests
and vegetation, and deeper cultivation and loosening of the
soil; or, in other words, the heat arising from the non-
absorptive and non-radiative state of the surface of the
country will not be produced and * cannot exist when it is
made absorptive and radiative. The second cause of the
excessive heat and aridity of the hot weather of the plains
of Upper India is surface- drainage ; and surface-drainage
is due to two sets of causes, the one natural and the other
artificial.

The natural causes of surface-drainage, such as the gradual
formation of streams and valleys and the wearing away or
degradation of the surface by the action of rain, are laid down
in any standard work on physical geography or geology, and
these may be passed over with the remark that in former days,
when the population of any country was scanty, and when
more land remained covered with forest growth, and less land
had been brought under cultivation, more of the rainfall would
have been arrested by the earth and less would have found its
way by surface -drainage to the streams and rivers, which
probably in those days were confined in well-defined channels,
and were amply capacious to convey to the sea the amount of
water which found its way to them without flooding the land
near them. Forests and woods preserve moisture in a country
in so far as they prevent or retard surface-drainage by their
leaves, which fall and form a soft porous carpet on the surface ;
this yearly increasing in depth holds water like a sponge,
the lower layers gradually rot and become incorporated with
the soil ; thus, in the course of time, there is in every forest
(where not carried away by surface- drainage), above the mineral
soil a layer of loose humus, the remains of decayed leaves, on

32 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP

which are other layers of leaves in varying stages of decay,
the whole forming a mass which freely admits water, and
prevents its escape by surface-drainage. The shade of the
trees prevents the inoidence of the direct rays of the sun ;
and the trees break the force of the wind and prevent the
surface of the ground being swept and dried by them.

Thus forests preserve moisture in a country, firstly, by their
soil being in a condition to arrest and retain water; and
secondly, by the trees preventing the incidence of the sun's
rays on the surface, and checking the force of the winds ;
thus the two chief causes of evaporation are absent. Some
slight amount of water is evaporated from the surface, but the
greater part gradually sinks into the subsoil, whence it is
taken up by the roots of trees, to be again given off by their
leaves in vapour, or finds its way by percolation, nature's own
system of subsoil drainage, to the nearest watercourses. The
ground under thick forests, where the leaves have been allowed
to accumulate and decay on the surface, is always moist,
showing that the amount of water lost by evaporation from the
leaves of the trees and the surface of the ground does not
equal the amount of yearly precipitation, and, in consequence,
we find that springs and watercourses often originate in
wooded lands and convey away some of the surplus water.
This seems to have been the state which existed in most
countries before the wants of an increasing population led to
a clearance of forests for agricultural purposes.

The artificial causes of surface-drainage must have been
prominently called into play from the time that man com-
menced to till the earth, as every operation of husbandry, by
loosening and exposing the surface of the soil to the action of
the sun, the wind, and the rain, would diminish the cohesion
of its particles, and bring it into a state more readily acted on
by them.

UPPER INDIA. 33

The more remote artificial causes have been at work for
such ages, and their results have become so extensive, that
they are generally regarded as natural causes, and it is not
uncommon to hear the terms natural drainage and surface-
drainage used as if synonymous, showing that all surface-
drainage has now come to be considered as natural drainage.
The more remote causes of surface- drainage are so spread
throughout the country, and are so extensive, that any
attempt to grapple with them would be futile at present.
It will be time to look after them when the more immediate
causes of surface-drainage have been modified. The more
immediate causes of surface- drainage are numerous and must
be separately considered.

Roads are one great cause of surface- drainage. They act
in this way. The ordinary unmetalled road soon gets worn
into ruts by the action of cart wheels, or men or cattle passing
over it. In the dry weather the loose dust is blown away from
the roads, and their level is lowered, the rain falling on the
land on the sides of the roads finds its way to them, and they
become the drainage channels of the country. In some cases
attempts are made to rectify this by digging continuous
drains on both sides of the roads, and throwing the soil dug
from them on the roads to raise them. The rain then falling
on the road and on the land on both sides of the road, finds an
exit by the ditches, and they instead of the roads become the
drainage channels of the country. Eventually both the road
and the land on its sides are washed away and become ravines,
these spread, eating back their way into the surrounding
country, which thus becomes useless for cultivation. The
metalled roads are generally somewhat raised above the level
of the country, the soil to raise them being taken from con-
tinuous drains by their sides, which, as in the case of the
unmetalled roads, become the drainage channels of the country

34 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

by which the land on both sides bordering the roads gets
carried away. This might be prevented by making ridges of
earth on the sides of the land or fields abutting the roads, and,
instead of continuous ditches acting as drains by the roads,
having separate pits or tanks to arrest the flow of the water,
which would be limited to what fell on the road.

The tanks for the reception of the rain-water running off
the roads need not be deep, the space they would occupy
would not be wasted, as they could be planted with the
" Singhara" (Trajoa bispinosa), a species of water-nut which is
much used by the natives as an article of food, and is eaten
either raw, roasted (when it is not unlike the chestnut), or it is
dried and ground into flour, when it is used mixed with water
as a porridge, or made into cakes, in which form it is much
eaten by Hindoos on fast days, when they are not by their
religion allowed to eat their ordinary food. The edges of
these tanks could be planted with the plantain or banana,
which is said by Humboldt and other authorities to produce a
greater amount of food for man off a given area of land than
any other plant. It is said ' ' that an area of land which sown
with wheat would feed only one man, would nourish five-and-
twenty if planted with bananas." The above has reference to
the fruit. The Bengalees also eat the inner part of the stem
of the plant as a vegetable.

The plantain propagates itself by suckers, and its leaves
and stem die away after it has borne fruit. In Upper India,
where it is not much cultivated, after bearing fruit, the stem
is cut down and allowed to rot on the ground, the natives not
knowing how to utilize it; but the whole plant, stem and
leaves, when chopped up, is readily eaten by cattle, and I hear
the milch-cows in Calcutta are regularly fed on it. Whether
this is the case or not I do not know, but I have for years
given what I had in my garden to cattle as food without any

UPPER INDIA. 35

injurious effects. The plantain being so useful both to man
and beast, its propagation should be encouraged on all lands
where it will grow. It flourishes best on low, moist lands,
such as the borders of tanks, jheels and swamps, and a fringe of
these plants round such places would prevent the spreading
of malaria and render the neighbourhood more healthy. Care
should be taken, in the first instance, to select plants bearing
a good description of fruit, as there are • some inferior sorts
of plantain undistinguishable by the appearance of the plant
which are perfectly useless as food, from the amount of seeds
they contain. In a warm, damp climate the plantain will bear
fruit in from one to one and a half years ; in the dry climate
of Upper India it does not bear under two or three years.

Another cause of surface-drainage originates in the higher
lands. These lands may be twenty, fifty, or even a hundred
feet higher than the level of the nearest rivers into which
they drain. In former times these lands appear to have been
regularly cultivated, and the fields composing them were
separated from one another by ridges or banks, perhaps from
one to two feet wide and six inches or a foot high, the remains
of which can be distinctly traced where not too deeply covered
with sand.

The higher parts of these lands — the water-shed — often
consists of blowing sands, regular inland dunes, which are year
by year increasing, and gradually covering the neighbouring
fields. These dunes, composed as they are of loose, blowing
sand, readily admit rain-water into them, and, except in heavy
downpours, not much runs off the surface, where tolerably
level ; where, however, the surface of the land between the
sandhills has become exposed by the blowing away of the
drift-sand, it collects the water falling near, forms water-
courses, and eventually ravines ; the hardened surface, where
exposed, is more like a concrete than a soil, and has the

u 2

36 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

appearance and almost the density of sandstone. On digging
into the sandhills we always find moisture present at a little
depth below the surface : this water is not retained by resting
on a stratum of clay or other impervious soil. If retained by
an impervious stratum, we must suppose it to form a saucer-
shaped depression, or escape of water would take place from
its lower side. But these sandhills are elevated above the
surrounding country, and there is no other way of accounting
for their retaining water than by capillarity. Jheels, or
swamps at the base of a range of sandhills, are fed by springs
with water throughout the year, and never dry up, showing
that all excess of water, beyond what can be held by capil-
larity, escapes by percolation.

Dunes occur in Europe, chiefly on the seashore ; and cen-
turies ago care was taken to encourage the growth of grass,
chiefly the Arundo arenaria, on them. This grass binds the
sand, and prevents its further drifting, and covering the
neighbouring country.

Of such importance was this considered, that according to
Marsh, in 1539, a decree of Christian III., King of Denmark,
imposed a fine upon persons convicted of destroying certain
species of sand-plants upon the coast of Jutland. This ordi-
nance was renewed in 1558 ; and in 1569 the inhabitants were
required to do their best to check the sand-drifts. In 1779
planting the Arundo arenaria and other sand-plants, and the
exclusion of animals destructive to them, was adopted as a
system. " Ten years later plantations of forest trees, which
have since proved so valuable a means of fixing the dunes, and
rendering them productive, were commenced, and have been
continued ever since."

The planting of seashore dunes has been carried out in all
European countries where they exist; the tree found most
useful and best adapted for them being the Finns maritima.

UPPER INDIA. 37

This tree has also in France been planted on inland dunes,
and with equal success. The Ailanthus glandulosa, or Japan
varnish-tree, has been successfully planted near Odessa for
fixing dunes, and the tamarisk has also been recommended
for that purpose.

Any tree that can be grown on these loose sands, as also
grasses, will be useful and tend * to bind them, and prevent
their blowing over and covering the surrounding country ; the
chief thing after planting being to prevent destruction of the
trees and grasses by cattle.

Where the land has not been reduced to the state of these
dunes, we find it very much impoverished and perhaps uncul-
tivated, or only cultivated at intervals of a few years with the
inferior descriptions of grain in the rains. The surface- soil is
sandy, but below a few inches of this sandy soil there is a firm
substratum of stiffer earth. It appears as if the finer parti-
cles of the soil on the higher lands had been carried away by
surface- drainage, and only the coarser gritty sand left behind.
When this process has been going on for a long period, we
have the dunes or sandhills, perfectly barren as far as regards
producing food for man or cattle, and next the impoverished
lands which only occasionally produce a crop of an inferior
description of grain. On these lands the dunes are gradually
encroaching; they are being reduced to the state of the
dunes ; and merely require time to become as useless agricul-
turally, unless steps are taken to prevent the spreading of
the dunes.

In former times, when these lands were regularly cultivated,
and the banks round the fields kept in repair, all rain falling
on them must have been arrested by the loosened cultivated
soil, and the ridges round the fields, either till it had time to
sink into the soil too deeply to be evaporated, or would have
been evaporated from the surface. There could have been no

38 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

loss from surface-drainage as long as the ridges round the
fields were in order and did their duty.

Now that these lands have been neglected, and the ridges
have been allowed to fall out of order and become useless, the
whole of the rain falling on them, with the exception of what
is arrested by the looser sand, runs off by surface-drainage ;
the rush of water to the lower land is increased in both volume
and force, and the land is cut into water-channels, by which,
with the rush of water, the loosened surface-soil is carried
away. The degradation of the surface-soil is shown by the
trees on the high land, whose roots have been laid bare, and
are now exposed above ground by the washing away of the
surface-soil. With this, all manure and vegetable matters,
such as the remains of stubble of former crops, leaves, &c, and
lying on the surface, are carried away ; the soluble salts of the
dung and urine of cattle in the upper layers of the soil are
also dissolved and washed out, and thus the soil of the coun-
try is robbed of its natural nourishment.

In every district a certain sum is set apart, under the name
of the Eoad and Ferry Fund, for keeping in order the roads,
and facilitating the means of internal communication. The
roads, as I have said, are being more rapidly destroyed by
surface-drainage than was formerly the case, and a yearly
increasing sum has to be laid out in their repair and on
bridges. The old bridges, which were formerly sufficient, are,
now that surface-drainage has increased, found insufficient
to carry off the water, and more extensive and expensive
bridges have to be built in their places, and new bridges have
to be built to cross watercourses which formerly did not exist.
The roads are getting more difficult for conveyance of goods
by wheeled carriages, and carriage by pack-animals may have
, ere long to be reverted to, if surface-drainage is allowed to go
on increasing at the rate it has done of late years.

UPPER INDIA. 39

Besides the damage done to the higher lands by washing
away their soil, carrying away the manure, &c, we must
consider what are the results of this to the low-lying lands im-
mediately below them, and in the smaller valleys of the water-
courses, which carry their waters to the rivers, as also to the
rivers themselves, and the countries through which they flow.

Where there are depressions on^the surface of the country
the rain-water finds its way to them, carrying with it the
manurial matters that were on the surface of the drainage
area. These depressions are known in India as jheels. The
area of these jheels is considerably greater in the rains than
at any other time of the year, from their spreading over the
surrounding low-lying land. They are mostly shallow, are
filled during and shortly after the rains with a dense growth
of flags, bulrushes, and other aquatic plants in their shallower
parts, and water-lilies where deeper. These plants die in the
cold weather, the jheels gradually decrease, the water being
lost by evaporation, or drawn off to irrigate the neighbouring
fields, and the shallower jheels are altogether dried up during
the hot weather. The decayed remains of the plants which
grew in them, and the vegetable matters brought to them
by surface- drainage, form a greasy, slimy mud, which, when
exposed to the sun, on drying, causes malaria, and makes the
surrounding country unhealthy.

The area of the land draining into the jheel may be five
or ten times the area of the jheel itself. The drainage area
cannot increase but by the action of water on the surface, the
drainage channels to the jheel are improved, and the water
falling on the drainage area more quickly finds its way to
the jheel. With the water, besides the vegetable matter
before mentioned, mineral soil is also carried down to the
jheel, and it gradually silts up. Another cause of their
filling up is found in the dust-storms of the hot weather.

40 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

It is probable that in former times these jheels were lakes
of open water fringed with bulrushes and other aquatic plants,
that they have been gradually getting shallower by silt, the
dust deposited in them by dust-storms, and the decaying of
the vegetation which was grown in them, and are now
becoming the sources of disease, in proportion to the greater
extent of their beds exposed to the influence of the sun's
heat. As sheets of open water they might be innocuous,
but it is the border of mud left by the drying up of the
waters which appears to be the cause of malaria. The soil
of the beds of these jheels is a sticky, slimy mud, containing
a considerable amount of vegetable matter, and enriched
with the exuviae of numberless water-fowl.

The drainage of jheels has been proposed as a general
measure, and in some instances has been carried out as a
method of getting rid of the unhealthiness they cause. In
Upper India, where it is said cultivation cannot be carried
out without irrigation, on account of the dryness of the soil
and climate, the soil and climate are to be made still more
dry by improved surface-drainage. To drain these jheels an
outlet must be made as deep as, or, where existing, must be
lowered to the level of the lowest part of their beds.

The water coming into the jheel not being checked as before
by being spread over a large area, will not deposit the various
vegetable and mineral matters it contains in suspension, but
will carry them through the drainage outlet with the rush of
its stream ; the outlet will be eroded and enlarged by the rush
of water, which will further deepen the bed of the outlet, and
the rich mud of the bed of the jheel will be carried away, to
be deposited on the country lower down the stream, where on
exposure it will cause malaria and disease. Disease in the
neighbourhood of the jheel would temporarily be got rid of,
— at the expense of increased disease to inhabitants of the

UPPER INDIA. 41

country lower down the stream into which the jheel was
drained, at the loss of valuable land which cannot be
recovered, and water which is wanted on the higher lands
would be more quickly conveyed away to the sea.

One newspaper, after describing the unhealthiness of parts
of Oude from shallow jheels, advocated drainage of the jheel s
and low country, on the ground that drainage and quinine
were supposed to be the only known remedies for fever and
its attendant evils ; and recommended irrigational canals (the
Sardah Canal project in this case), for that very part of the
country, on the ground that until it were irrigated by canals
there would be no chance of drainage being carried out ;
showing drainage is considered a necessary sequel to irriga-
tion by irrigationists. It does not seem to have occurred to
the editor that prevention is better than cure, and that there
might be a way of preventing the formation of jheels with
their attendant fevers and ill effects, as effectual and valuable
as vaccination is in preventing small- pox, and that this pre-
ventive remedy consists in accepting and taking advantage
of rain, one of the most valuable gifts of the Almighty to
man, and allowing it to sink into the earth where it fell,
instead of spurning the precious gift and doing our utmost to
get rid of it.

Floods in the Ganges and other Indian rivers are hailed
in the newspapers, by a strange perversity of reasoning, as
cheering assurances of rain having fallen further up coun-
try. Surely the sight of so much water running to waste,
and damaging, instead of fertilizing the earth, should cause
feelings of regret rather than of rejoicing.

Is Upper India suffering from an excess of moisture ? If
so, why extend irrigation ? If not suffering from an excess
of moisture, why resort to drainage ? The fact is, that the
water so much wanted is allowed to run to waste by streams,

42

CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

or is collected in hollows where it does harm, instead of being
in the soil of the fields, where it is required for the crops ;
where Nature gave it and intended it should be used. It is
in the wrong place.

A cubic foot of rain-water is said to contain, on an average,
the following manurial matters : —

Nitrogen

... 10 to 12 grains

Nitric acid,

about

... 26

Ammonia

„

... 5

Chlorine

a

... 3

Magnesia

a

... 3

Lime

,,

... 9

Every cubic foot of rain-water that runs off by surface-
drainage is a loss of the above amount of manurial matters,
which would, had the water sunk into the ground, have been
retained in its upper layers available for the use of crops.

Nature knows best where water is wanted and ought to be,
and deposits it over the whole country ; cannot we carry out
Nature's grand conception by assisting her to retain the
water she gives where she places it ?

Another result of draining the jheels would be that the fish
in them, which supply a considerable amount of food to the
neighbouring population, would be lost. The unhealthiness
of these jheels, and the jheels themselves, are a result of
surface- drainage ; prevent the surface-drainage and the jheels
will be reduced, and the unhealthiness caused by them will
disappear.

I have mentioned on a previous page the ridges or small
embankments round the fields, the remains of which are still
traceable on the higher lands, showing they were formerly
cultivated, and which are now used throughout the country as
boundary-marks of the separate fields. These ridges, which

UPPER INDIA. 43

are kept up more particularly on irrigated lands, are now
simply the bounds defining the limits of the different fields,
and are as narrow as they well can be, so as to occupy as small
a space as possible.

It is possible that when these ridges were first brought into
use it was with a view, not only of defining the limits of the
fields, but of preventing the escape and flow of the rain-water ;
or, when only a small portion of the land of the country was
cultivated, the latter may have been the only reason for making
them.

Now with reference to j heels, if we want to prevent un-
healthiness arising from them, we have merely to take measures
to prevent their increased water area in the rainy season ; and
this can be done by banking up the fields of their drainage
basins, in the way the natives ridge up their fields, taking
care to do it effectually, so as to prevent surface- drainage.
The operation should be commenced at the highest point or
water- shed, and the different fields should be consecutively
taken in hand to the edge of the jheel. In forming the banks,
the soil to make them should be dug out from their lower
sides, from pits ; and not from ditches, which might become
channels of surface-drainage : they should be made of sufficient
width to withstand the water they may be required to hold
back ; of sufficient height to retain any probable heavy fall of
rain ; and on the upper side the soil should be filled in in a
sloping direction to the top of the banks, so that the water
should not lodge at their bases, but at some little distance
from them. I have been told that if we retain the rain-water
by banking up the fields we shall have the whole country
under water, and that the whole country will suffer from fever,
&c, as the low lands subjected to inundation now do.

The average annual rainfall throughout Upper India may
be about 24 inches. Supposing it even to be 36 inches, and

44 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

that the whole annual rainfall (which, however, is not the
case) were precipitated in three months, from 20th June to
20th September, the rainfall would be 12 inches per month,
less than three inches per week, and considerably less than
half an inch per diem. If the soil were cultivated a foot deep,
a large amount of the rain would be absorbed by the loosened
soil, as it fell, as by a sponge, and some would be continually
sinking into the subsoil by gravitation. As to the water
penetrating the soil, causing fever, and rendering the higher
lands as unhealthy as the lower lands now are, there does not
seem to be much ground for this opinion, as where there are
high lands with a loose soil, which arrests a larger proportion
of the rain which falls on it, than the ordinary arable lands,
and which escapes by percolation to the lower-lying lands or
jheels instead of by surface-drainage, these high lands, known
as bhoor lands, are remarkable- as being the healthiest parts of
the different districts in which they are. I am not aware of
any case where water held in the soil by capillary attraction
alone has been proved to be prejudicial to health.

The deeply-cultivated soil and the ridges would prevent
loss of water from the surface of the land composing the
drainage area of the jheel, would retain it where it fell, and
the jheel would not be extended over the surrounding low-
lying land in the rains. The deep cultivation, moreover, is a
protection against loss of water by evaporation. When soil
is deeply cultivated, rain falling on the surface passes through
the loosened soil by gravitation, almost as soon as it falls
on the surface; it gets under cover, and little is lost by
evaporation.

It is universally admitted by agriculturists in all countries
where farming has been studied as a science, and is not
despised and left in the hands of the most ignorant of the
population, as in India, that deep cultivation and pulveriza-

UPPER INDIA. 45

tion of the soil preserve moisture in it. The reason of this,
however, does not appear to be so well known as it deserves
to be. It has been stated on a previous page that woods and
forests preserve moisture, as their leaves falling on the
ground retard surface-drainage, and hold water like a sponge.
The trees act mechanically as a screen, they prevent the
incidence of the sun's rays on the soil, and also break the
force of the wind ; thus the two great causes of evaporation
are interfered with, and their effects moderated. In the case
of lands deeply cultivated, and the soil thoroughly disin-
tegrated and pulverized, the action is very similar. The
greater part of the rain falling on the surface sinks quickly
through the loosened soil, and is temporarily arrested by the
soil underlying it, which gradually absorbs it under the pres-
sure of gravitation, the remainder being held in the loosened,
pulverized soil by capillarity. This water held by capillarity
is evaporated by the action of the sun and winds, from the
upper loosened soil, and as this becomes dry, it absorbs, by
capillary attraction, more moisture from the moist stratum
immediately below it. The height to which moisture will
rise in loose, open, well-worked soils by capillary attraction
is, however, very limited, and the loss from this cause would
soon cease or be reduced to next to nothing. But as loss of
moisture from this cause diminishes, another comes into
operation, — the air penetrates the loosened soil, and when
in the daytime it becomes heated, it expands, ascends, and
carries off moisture in the form of vapour from the depths to
which it had penetrated. During the night the reverse takes
place ; and as the loosened earth parts with the heat by radia-
tion (which it had absorbed during the day) it is moistened by
the vapour of water in the air which is condensed in and on
it. The soil now, instead of being, as in the case of fields
hardened with irrigation, an almost inert mass, has, as it

46 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

were, become endowed with life, and acts as a breathing
object, inhaling heat by day, exhaling it by night; abstracting
from the air carbonic acid gas and ammonia, and both giving
to and taking from it water.

The system of deep cultivation of the soil, and thus allowing
the water to sink into it too deeply to be lost by evaporation,
is that which, according to Marsh, was recommended by
Palissy and Babinet for the formation of artificial springs.
In the case of deep cultivation generally over a country, more
especially a level country, there is a reservoir of water under
every field, sufficient to supply the wants of vegetation held
there by the soil itself. We enlist in our favour the powers
of capillarity possessed by the soil. In what is the action of
loosened soil different from that of forests in retaining
moisture ?

The upper loosened soil acts as trees do, and shades the
soil below it. The loosened soil acts as a sponge, as the
leaves of trees on the surface-soil of a forest do, and arrests
the rain falling on it, and gives it time to sink under cover,
and when the rain falling on the surface has sunk through
the upper loosened soil it is as effectually protected from the
evaporative influences of sun and wind as is water in the soil
of a forest. The fact that leaves lying on the ground prevent
evaporation of moisture from it, has led gardeners to employ
leaves, straw, and other refuse vegetable matters to spread on
the surface to keep the ground moist by preventing evapora-
tion. This is called a mulch. Now, soil of every description,
loosely spread on the surface, acts in the same way ; but
different soils do nob act equally, and their powers of prevent-
ing loss of moisture by evaporation appear to be in inverse
ratio to their powers of retaining heat. So humus, or decayed
vegetable matter, which is placed at the bottom of Schubler's
list of earths, would have the greatest power of preventing

UPPER INDIA. 47

evaporation, and calcareous sand the least. The more humus,
therefore, that there may be in a soil, the greater will be its
power of preventing loss of moisture by evaporation. This,
then, is another reason why, in dry climates more particularly ,
care should be taken to preserve and bury in the soil all
refuse vegetable matters.

To return to our jheels. We have, by banking up the fields
of their drainage basins, and by deep cultivation of them, the
water in the subsoil instead of in or on the surface- soil merely.
Once there and out of danger of loss by evaporation, the water
will gradually find its way to the jheels by percolation or natural
subsoil-drainage, which process will continue throughout the
year; there will be a constant supply of water furnished to
the jheel, which will be kept within more moderate limits in
the rains, its bed will not be dried up and exposed to the
action of the sun's heat in the dry seasons of the year, and
thus we should get rid of a most fertile source of malaria,
disease, and death. At the same time that excess of moisture
would escape by percolation to the jheels, sufficient would
be held in the soil for all the requirements of plants, by
capillarity.

In the same way that water by surface- drainage finds its
way to jheels, it also does to the minor water-courses, and
eventually to the rivers ; the drainage area is not increased,
but the action of the water wears the surface-soil into slopes
and channels, which facilitate the rush of the water ; the beds
of the water-courses and rivers are no longer able to carry off
the water as quickly as it is brought to them, consequently
they overflow their banks and spread over the low land near
them. Over this land, out of the influence of the main
current, the water is more sluggish, and it deposits on it the
organic, vegetable and mineral substances it has brought
down in suspension. As the floods subside, the action of the

48 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

sun on the matters deposited by them causes malaria and
disease, as in the case of jheels.

A marked case of this kind lately occurred in the district
of Moradabad. The river Sote rises in that district, in the
plains, and flows through the district of JBudaon to the Ganges.
In 1871 a part of the valley of this river in the Moradabad
district became very unhealthy, nearly the whole of the popu-
lation being prostrated with fever shortly after the end of the
rains. On inquiry it appeared that the country on both sides
of the river at that part was very low and flat; the valley
below was rather contracted, the water could not run off as
quickly as it was received, and the low flat land was under
water for some time ; this was where the unhealthiness was
the greatest. Further down the river and all through the
Budaon district, where the river keeps in a better defined
channel, with more abruptly sloping banks, there was no
unhealthiness in the valley of this river. I believe the
drainage of the unhealthy part of the valley was proposed
as a sanitary measure. If carried out, this will be another
addition to the many causes we now have tending to desiccate
the country and increase the violence and devastating power
of the floods. Another case, and one of much greater im-
portance, as affecting a larger extent of country and a greater
population, is exactly similar, and that is Lower Bengal.

The same causes mentioned as affecting the climate in the
neighbourhood of jheels, and in the case of the Sote river, are
here at work, but on a more gigantic scale. The Ganges
cannot carry off the water brought to it as quickly as it
receives it ; all Lower Bengal is flooded, and the results are
fever and disease spread throughout the country. Increased,
or, as it is called, improved surface- drainage in the drainage
basin of the Ganges means increased desiccation of the part
of the country where it is carried out, and increased floods

UPPER INDIA. 49

and disease in Bengal. Every place drained will add its mite
at the rate of one hundred tons of water for every inch of rain-
fall conducted to the Ganges from every acre of land whose
surface-drainage is thus improved.

The evils in the case of Bengal are not only more extended
and affect a greater population, but are more virulent, and
should the fevers which have been ravaging the country for
the last few years continue, large districts will be depopulated.
Cholera is hardly ever absent from some parts of Lower Bengal
which are liable to inundation. It often also originates at
fairs held on the banks of rivers on lands subject to floods,
and seems in many cases to spread up or down the courses
of rivers. It appears to be a disease induced by filth and a
saturated surface-soil, and it might well be that this disease
would diminish were the low lands not so liable to inundation.

The drainage of Bengal has been proposed as a remedy.
The operation would be a difficult and expensive one, as the
country is almost a dead level ; but supposing it done, how it
would prevent floods the causes of which are some hundreds
of miles away, does not appear ; and how rice, the ordinary
staple food-grain of Lower Bengal, and which requires water to
grow in, is to be grown when the country is drained, is a mystery
to me. The drainage of Bengal, however, is not required for
the purpose of getting rid of the rain falling on Bengal itself,
which is not in excess of its requirements, but to convey away
the water of the floods which originated in Upper India and
have been caused by improved surface - drainage there.
Upper India, or at least that part of it included in the drainage
basin of the Ganges, is being desiccated to swamp Bengal.

One cause of the greatly increased amount of fevers and
unhealthiness of Bengal, in addition to the more rapid sur-
face-drainage of the basin of the Ganges generally, which
alone would cause higher floods, is the improved surface-

E

50 CLIMATE AND EESOUECES OF

drainage of the sites of towns and villages, and the land
around them, as a sanitary measure, in Upper India. Near
all towns and villages in Upper India there exist pits and
hollows from which earth has been dug for building and other
purposes. These are being drained to get rid of the filth
deposited in and near them. As these pits and hollows have
for ages been used as latrines, and are still so used, and as all
the filth of the towns and villages drains to, and is accumulated
in them, it is evident that the drainage of these low lands
must throw a greater amount of filth into the rivers into
which they are drained; this eventually finds its way into
the Ganges, and may fairly be considered one cause of the
increased unhealthiness of Bengal. This increased unhealthi-
ness has only been noticed for a few years, probably since the
time that the improved surface- drainage of towns has been
in vogue as a sanitary measure. Quinine and drainage are
recommended for Bengal as remedies for the fevers prevalent
there. What can quinine and drainage effect when the causes
of the evil are not interfered with, but are, on the contrary,
being increased every day ?

In the report of the Sanitary Commissioner of the North-
western Provinces for 1870-71, it is said in para. 37, "Some-
times indeed a good landlord, or the cultivators in combination,
will make a good well, which, much frequented, soon becomes
noted for its surrounding filthy moisture ; for no care is given
to drainage, excepting, perhaps, that whenever a resident
finds accumulating water unpleasant, he endeavours to direct
it to the first conveniently- situated lower-lying place at hand,
without thought of his neighbours' rights or feelings."

Fault is found, and very properly, with people for getting
rid of a nuisance by shunting it on their neighbours, but
throughout the report we find improved surface- drainage to
low grounds and rivers recommended as a means of getting

UPPER INDIA. 51

rid of " hurtful or excessive moisture." If the moisture is
"hurtful or excessive" on the high lands, it will be much
more so on the low lands.

What is surface- drainage but increasing the pollution of the
rivers, and as they fall into the Ganges, making it a main
sewer. In the floods, the sewage-matter of the drainage
basin of the Ganges is deposited on Bengal, and this is suffi-
cient to account for the present unhealthy state of the country
— increased floods and an increased amount of filth brought
down by the floods ; both the floods and the filth being the
results of the so-called improved surface-drainage. It appears
as if the " rights and feelings " of Bengal are not much con-
sidered by his neighbours in Upper India.* In the same way
that the accumulation of water in the bed of a jheel, and its
extending over the neighbouring low land in the rains, can
be prevented, and its bed kept from drying up in the hot
weather, so also can floods in rivers during the rains be pre-
vented, and greater depth of water kept up in them during
the dry seasons of the year, and that way is by retaining the
rain-water in the soil on which it fell, preventing its escape
by surface-drainage, and permitting it only to find its way to
lower land and streams, filtered by percolation (natural subsoil
drainage) through the soil. The rivers would remain at a
more equable depth throughout the year, which would greatly
facilitate their navigation, and many of the smaller streams,
only occasionally used for navigation during the rains, would
be navigable throughout the year.

The Ganges and Jumna rise in the Himalayas, and after a
comparatively short course in the hills, enter the plains, flow
separately to Allahabad, where they join, and then run to the sea.

The volume of water of these rivers and their tributaries
where they issue from the hills, is a mere fraction of the
* See Appendix B, p. 101.
E 2

52 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

amount conveyed by the Ganges through its various mouths
to the sea. The greater part of this vast volume of water
has fallen on the plains of the drainage basin of the Ganges,
and if the system I ha^e described of banking up the fields
were carried out throughout the country, so as to prevent
surface- drainage, we should hear no more of floods and the
damage done by them.

It is only two or three years since the towns of Jounpore
and Azimgurh, on two separate rivers, both rising in the
plains, were nearly washed away by floods which must have
originated in the plains, a clear proof that improved surface-
drainage is not required in that part of the country. Besides
the more notorious cases of damage by floods, such as the
carrying away of towns and villages, the cutting away of lands,
railway embankments, and bridges, and the fevers and other
illnesses caused by their drying up, there are other evils the
results of floods which are not so generally known. Large
areas of land which only a few years ago used amongst other
produce, to carry rain crops, are now never sown with those
crops, as the land has now, by increased surface -drainage
higher up the country become so liable to inundation, that the
risk of loss from that cause is greater than the prospect of
gain. The cultivation is not safe. It is too much of a gam-
bling transaction, with heavy odds against the cultivator who
is rash enough to try it.

The districts of Seharunpore and Mozuflurnuggur, where
irrigation from the Ganges Canal has been largely practised of
late years (the canal was opened about twenty years ago),
have become notoriously unhealthy, and special inquiries and
reports have been made on the causes of the unhealthiness of
these districts, which previous to the opening of the canal
were as healthy as any in Upper India, in fact, were favourite
districts. The results of the inquiries and reports is a recom-

UPPER INDIA. 53

mendation that these districts, which formerly did not suffer
from excess of water, should have their suface-drainage, or
natural drainage channels improved. This is being done, and
the result must be that the rain falling on these districts, or
such part of them as have their surface- drainage improved, will
more quickly find its way to the rivers, and will cause greater
floods lower down country and greater damage to Bengal.
u Improved surface-drainage," however, is the popular cry of
the present time in India. The result of increased drainage
facilities near the sources of streams, must be that their beds,
which are adapted to carry away a given amount of water
gradually finding its way to them, cannot hold the same
amount suddenly brought to them, the water must spread and
overflow the low-lying lands near them, the banks of the
rivers must get worn away by erosion, the rivers get choked
up with the silt they have brought down, the debris of the land
they have ruined; this raises their beds and reduces the amount
of water they are able to carry to the sea, whilst an increased
amount is brought to them, causing the floods to extend over
an increased area ; bars form across their mouths, and their
navigation becomes more and more difficult and dangerous.

The heat and consequent aridity of the climate (so far as
they are due to surface-drainage), will decrease, as surface-
drainage is lessened, as will also its other ill consequences, e.g.
floods and their attendant evils, &c. On the contrary, as sur-
face-drainage is increased, or as it is now the fashion in India
to say, improved, all these evils will be exaggerated. Every
single field from which loss of water by surface- drainage is
prevented, will tend to lessen the ravages of floods.

Every inch of rainfall lost by surface-drainage from every
acre of ground, represents a loss of one hundred tons of
water to that acre ; water which that acre (in Upper India at
least, and in all countries where during the year there are long

54 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

periods of dry weather) can ill afford to lose. The average
loss of water by surface- drainage throughout the country is
probably half the rainfall, but supposing it to be ten inches,
then the loss per acre would be one thousand tons or 640,000
tons per square mile, which increases the floods.

There are many thousands of square miles of country
within the drainage basin of the Ganges that could be made
safe against famine and the effects of droughts by taking care
of the rainfall ; and at the same time the climate of Upper
India would be improved, and floods and their ill effects would
be no more known throughout the lower lands and in Bengal.
One of the ill effects of floods in Bengal is, that the banks
which are made round the rice-fields to retain the rainfall, are
broken by the rush of the flood-water, and are thus rendered
unable to retain sufficient either of the flood-water, or the
rain which falls on the land, for the wants of the rice crop.*

From the foregoing pages it will be seen that it is during
the hot weather, when the capacity of the atmosphere for
holding the vapour of water in suspension is at its maximum,
and when the air would be most cooled by evaporation from
the surface of the earth, solar heat being expended in evapo-
ration, that the minimum amount of moist evaporative surface
is presented to the influence of the rays of the sun. There is
next to no vapour in the atmosphere to moderate the force
of the direct rays of solar heat falling on the surface of the
earth, which being exposed to their unmitigated heat becomes
excessively heated, and heats the air coming in contact with
it. Any method by which we can increase the evaporative
surface of the country, and diminish the extent of its bare
reflective surface, will tend to diminish the heat of its climate.
Trees and vegetation of any kind will do this, in so far as
they shade the ground from the direct rays of the sun, and
* See Appendix C, p. 102.

UPPEE INDIA. 55

prevent its becoming heated ; they also absorb heat during
the day, which they give off by radiation at night, and they
transpire from their leaves the moisture which they imbibe
by their roots from the lower-lying moist strata of the earth,
which in the form of vapour in the atmosphere moderates
the amount of solar heat falling on the ground.

Supposing the country to be divided like a chess-board,
the squares of say a mile each in measurement, the black
squares planted with trees and bushes, and the white squares
left bare for cultivation, arable land, the planted squares
would absorb a great amount of the solar heat which fell on
them, and the air in the daytime above them would not be
so hot as that coming in contact with the surface of the bare
squares. The cooler air over the planted squares would by
its greater gravity sink and displace the air over the bare
squares as it became heated and expanded. At night, the
heat absorbed by the planted squares during the day would
be given off by radiation, the superincumbent air would be
chilled, sink, and spread over the surface of the bare squares,
displacing the more heated air which had not been chilled by
radiation. The trees on the planted squares would act me-
chanically in checking and breaking the force of the wind,
as a lattice-work breakwater breaks the force of the waves ;
they would also deflect the wind upwards ; it would not sweep
over the surface of the bare squares as it does over a plain
where there is nothing to check its force, and its drying
effects would be lessened. The surface-soil of the bare squares
would not be so dried and hardened from the action of the
wind as the open plain now is ; the air would contain more
vapour of water evaporated from the trees of the planted
squares ; and this again would interpose a screen which
would lessen the amount of solar heat falling on the surface
of the bare squares. The soil of the bare squares not being

56 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

so dried and hardened could be ploughed and broken up at
any season of the year, which now it cannot be, owing to its
hardened condition ; and when broken up, it too would fur-
ther help to moderate the heat of the hot weather by its
increased absorptive and radiative powers.

It is universally admitted by all physicists that the presence
of forests and trees tends to equalize the temperature of a
country throughout the year ; that the summers are not so
hot, and the winters not so cold, as in a country devoid of
trees. I have shown how it would affect the summer heat.
The chief reasons of the winters not being so cold is the
retarded radiation of heat from the ground under the trees,
caused by their foliage and branches. When, however, in
consequence of the presence of trees, the bare fields were
broken up and made absorptive and radiative, it might be
considered that the heat caused by arrested radiation from
the ground under the trees might be counteracted by the
increased radiation from the bare land. This is a problem
that has not, as far as I am aware, been solved as yet, and
must depend greatly on the relative proportions of the
wooded and bare lands. As radiation of heat from the bare
lands would be moderated by the amount of vapour in the
atmosphere, and the vapour in the atmosphere in dry climates
is mainly derived by evaporation from the leaves of trees,
it is evident that the greater the proportion of wooded land
the less would be the loss of heat by radiation at night from
the bare land.

The greater the proportion of land covered with trees the
more will the country be cooled during summer by its effects.
If the uncultivated lands now lying useless, and which are
obnoxious to the climate, were planted, one of the chief im-
mediately remediable sources of heat would be obliterated,
and we should in its stead have a source of coolness from thr

UPPEE INDIA. 57

amount of heat used up in the evaporation of moisture from
the leaves of the trees ; and the amount of vapour in the air
from the evaporation would lessen the amount of solar heat
falling on the surface of the earth. The extent of the surface
of the earth exposed to the direct action of solar heat would
be lessened, and the exposed surface would be less heated.
If it is admitted that the hot west winds are the results of the
heating of the surface of the earth by the direct incidence of the
rays of the sun, it must follow that they would be moderated
in proportion to the reduced surface area exposed to the action
of the sun, and to the lessened heating of that surface.
Should there still be west winds, the trees would mechanically
break their force and deflect them upwards ; their sweeping,
drying effects on the surface would be less ; the ground
would not be so hardened in the hot weather as it now is,
and the vapour in the air, now carried away to the east by
the strong west winds, would, as the winds became more
moderated or subdued, remain suspended over the country,
and be present in the superincumbent air to be deposited as
dew or rain.

The statement is frequently made that the hot west winds
are useful in keeping houses and buildings cool by promoting
evaporation from tatties, &c. What is this but an admission
that the hot winds are useful to this extent — that we can in
houses, by their means, moderate the heat that has created
them, and which they themselves intensify. Also that some
method of cooling houses is, under existing circumstances,
necessary, and in the case of tatties this is done by evapora-
tion, which moistens the air in the houses.

In the case of a well-wooded country the result is the same
— the evaporation cools the air. It is common in describing
a place to say it is green and cool-looking. This combination
of greenness and coolness is not altogether imaginary, as

58 CLIMATE AND EESOURCES OF

some people think. The fresh verdure of vegetation is a great
absorbent of heat ; and moisture, which cools the surrounding
air, is largely evaporated from fresh young leaves. These
effects are lessened as the leaves lose the freshness of youth,
fade, and dry up. Young leaves have a soft, yielding surface,
and are filled with sap; as they become older they become
harsh and crisp to the touch, and lose their power of absorb-
ing and radiating heat ; they also contain less sap, and can
give up but a reduced amount by evaporation; hence the
effect of forests and vegetation in cooling the air is greater
immediately after the trees are fresh clothed with new leaves
in spring than when the leaves are drying up and dying.

Besides the influence of trees in moderating the extremes
of heat and cold of the climate of a country, there is the
influence they exert on the rainfall. I have stated that the
rainfall in the Dooab is small in comparison with that of the
Teraee and southern slopes of the Himalayas. Forests and
vegetation, by radiation, cool the air, and the cooled air
coming into contact with warm air laden with humidity,
causes condensation, and the vapour of water in the air is
precipitated. The greater rainfall of the Teraee and southern
slopes of the Himalayas is due to the greater amount of radia-
tion caused by the forests there. The clouds laden with
vapour pass over the bare plains without discharging their
moisture, because there is a want of absorptive and radiative
power, and the air above them not being cooled by radiation,
the clouds do not part with their moisture, but retain it till
they reach a place where such chilling of the air by radiation
occurs, which they find over the Teraee and the southern
slopes of the Himalayas. The rank vegetation of the Teraee,
and its unheal thiness, are due to the greater precipitation of rain
and accumulation of water in the vegetable soil from surface-
drainage. By planting the uncultivated lands of the plains

UPPEE INDIA.

59

with trees, and thus making the surface of the country more
absorptive and radiative, the clouds in passing over it, coming
in contact with the chilled air, would part with more of the
water with which they are charged, and less would remain
to be precipitated over the Teraee and southern slopes of
the Himalayas, and the rainfall would be more equally dis-
tributed over the whole country. "The moisture, instead of
being retained in the clouds until it fell in torrents, would be
more frequently precipitated, the showers would be more
frequent, and milder in their character. There would be
frequent gentle, soaking showers, instead of occasional torrents
of rain.

The action of deeply- cultivated soil in chilling the air and
causing precipitation must be the same as that of forests. A
solid, firm soil, saturated with water, is a bad absorbent and
radiator of heat. Break up the soil deeply, so that rain falling
on it may sink quickly to the subsoil, and that the surface-
soil may not remain so saturated, and may be more quickly
dried by evaporation, and we shall then find that, by its
increased powers of absorption and radiation of heat, it will
act in the same way as forests in cooling the temperature of
the country in the rains and in promoting rainfall.

The extent of barren lands — lands formerly cultivated, but
now producing no crop, save, perhaps, some poor grass in the
rains, is increasing every year.

The causes of the increase of these barren lands are nume-
rous. On the high land we have the sandhills or dunes, which
are yearly extending and spreading over the neighbouring
fields ; the oosur plains consisting of a hard soil, with a saline
efflorescence which sterilizes them ; the ravines, the results
of surface- drainage, by which the land is carried away; and the
lands covered with reh by irrigation. Besides the improve-
ment to the climate which would accrue from planting these

60 CLIMATE AND RESOUECES OF

now useless lands, there are other benefits of no small im-
portance which nature has pointed out.

Where land is allowed to remain undisturbed by man, and
cattle are not allowed to graze on it, in course of time it
becomes covered with grasses, trees, and shrubs. The grasses
as they die, and the leaves falling on the land, enrich the soil,
and render it more fertile than it formerly was. When forest
land is broken up the surface-soil is found richer, and pro-
duces better crops without manure than land which has
been some lengthened time under cultivation. This is due to
the accumulation of vegetable matter in the upper layers of
the soil ; the leaves, &c, which have rotted on it and become
converted into humus or vegetable mould, and the roots
which have penetrated the deeper layers of the soil and have
forced apart its particles have made it more loose and porous,
and the smaller root-fibres or rootlets have also on rotting
become humus.

Having this evidence before us of the results of forest
growth, we can easily imagine what would be the ultimate
effects on the soil of planting barren lands with trees. The
first expense may, while these lands are in the hands of im-
poverished landlords, be the chief obstacle; the expense,
however, would be a mere trifle, as most of the trees grow
well from seed sown on the spot, and no transplanting is
needed. But as trees grow very rapidly in Upper India, and
wood for all purposes sells at a very high rate, particularly
where the barren lands are chiefly situated, and where there
is no wood grown on the spot, the expenses would soon be
recovered, the return would be sharp.

Wood is largely used as fuel by the railways for locomo-
tives, and has to be brought from a distance, which is steadily
increasing, and costing more for carriage. The natives can
only at high prices obtain the wood required in constructing

UPPEE INDIA. 61

their houses. Even a thatched shed requires a ridge-pole,
and bamboos or some substitute for them for the framework
of the thatch. The trees best suited for planting, and which
besides improving the land would be of value as timber, are
the babool, sissoo or sheesham, the saras mango, mulberry,
neem, and ber. One of the most common substitutes for
bamboos in the frames of thatches Is the stalk of the castor-
oil plant, and this plant requires some consideration. It will
grow almost anywhere, and is in many ways of great economic
value. Besides the stalks being used as above stated, they are
also used in flat-roofed houses as battens, the oil is largely
used as a lubricant by the railways, and now that gas is made
from oil- cake, the refuse cake, which is useless or poisonous as
a cattle-food, could be used for gas manufacture, as also could
the nut itself before the oil was extracted from it. The leaves
are to some extent gathered and given to cattle as food,
although said not to be good for them in large quantities,
still, wherever any castor-oil plants are accessible to cattle, we
find all the leaves are eafcen off in the hot weather. One
advantage of this plant is its rapid growth, plants attaining a
height of ten or fifteen feet by the month of April from seed
sown the previous June or July. This plant will live some
ten or more years, and propagates itself by the seeds which
fall from it ; once sown it only requires to be protected from
the depredations of cattle. Advantage should be taken of the
rapid growth of this plant to use it as a nurse to trees of more
delicate habit. The mango, for instance, for the first few
years after being planted out, is usually protected by being
tied up in long grass during the cold weather to protect it
from frost. Were the castor-oil plant thickly studded over the
ground between the young mango plants they would be as
effectually protected from frost as they now are, and in the
spring their leaves would not have the pale sickly hue the

62 CLIMATE AND KESOUKCES OF

trees have which have been protected by being wrapped up
in grass.

As the castor-oil plant bears fruit within six months after
being sown, and continues to bear annually, extensive culti-
vation of it might be remunerative. I have, however, never
seen a good-sized field of it in Upper India. There is often a
row sown by the side of sugar-cane fields, where it is treated
as an annual, and cut down in March or April ; and it is
grown about gardens and in villages occasionally, and it is in
villages on high sandy land, where the finest specimens of the
plant are to be seen, which show to what size it will grow if
protected from cattle, and with what ease the sandhills and
barren land might be covered with it.

There would be but little difficulty in inducing growth of
trees, &c, on the high sandy lands. As I have said before,
water is present in them throughout the year, and is not lost
by capillary attraction and evaporation ; and the prevention
of surface- drainage would enable trees to grow more rapidly
on them. Small pits dug for the seed to be deposited in, or for
young plants, is all the digging necessary. On the harder
soils the whole ground should be deeply dug or trenched, to
prevent loss of water by capillary attraction, in addition to
making banks to prevent surface-drainage. In England it is
recommended to dig deeply, or trench the whole of a piece of
ground on which it is intended to plant timber or forest
trees, in preference to merely making pits for the several
trees. It is said that by digging or trenching the whole
ground the trees are not so liable to suffer should dry seasons
occur after they have been planted out. If in the rains we
cultivate a field deeply, and break up and pulverize the soil
finely so as to leave no clods, we shall find more moisture in the
soil within a few inches of the surface, throughout the succeed-
ing hot weather, than in the soil of a field not so broken up.

UPPER INDIA. 63

The law of capillarity of soils, not yet sufficiently studied or
understood as far as I am aware, by which a fixed percentage
of moisture is retained in the soil where deeply cultivated,
within a varying depth from the surface, which depth is
governed by the nature of the soil and the state of the atmo-
sphere, requires some consideration. The lower parts of a
deeply-loosened soil being pressed together by the weight
of the superincumbent soil, are more able to raise water
by capillary attraction from the wet subsoil, and to retain
it, than the upper parts which are not so pressed together,
and are less liable to loss of moisture from evaporation than
the upper layers of the soil which cover and protect it. The
greater the power of retaining water possessed by the soil the
nearer the surface will any fixed percentage of water be
found; and it will be found nearer the surface during a
humid than in a dry state of the atmosphere.

Cases are common in England where the surface of the
ground, which keeps perfectly dry during a continuance of
dry weather, becomes wet on the approach of rain, and water
oozes out. During the dry weather the ground is kept dry
by evaporation of the water, as it rises to the surface by
capillary attraction. On the approach of rain, the air being
more humid, there is less evaporation, and the surface is wet.
People who have not before seen it are astonished on being
shown the amount of moisture present in May and the earlier
part of June previous to the rains, in Upper India, within a
few inches from the surface, in soils which were deeply dug in
the preceding rains, which have been well pulverized, and
have not become caked into masses. The loosened layer of
surface-soil acts as a mulch, the particles of soil being more
widely separated, the water cannot rise by capillary attraction
to the surface, as it does where the particles are closer together.

At one time I thought moisture might rise through a pul-

64 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

verized soil sooner than through a denser, and that advantage
might be taken of it to carry out a system of subsoil irriga-
tion, by which water might be economized, and at the same
time the surface-soil not be hardened. On a lawn which had
been regularly irrigated, and the soil hardened, I dug drains,
laid down tiles, and filled in the drains with the loose soil.
The tiles were laid some fifteen inches below the surface, and
were loosely put together, so that water might easily escape.
I made a reservoir, and the drains all branched from it ; and
from the reservoir all the drains could be supplied with water.
It was reversing the system of subsoil drainage. The drains
were to convey water to the subsoil and irrigate it, instead of
conveying water from the subsoil and making it dry. In
practice I found the surface of the soil over the drains was
dry, but the surface on both sides at a little distance from
the drains was wet ; the moisture rose to the surface where
the soil was hard and consolidated, and was then exposed to
evaporative influences, but it had not risen to the surface
where the soil was loose — this showed the difference in the
power of capillary attraction possessed by the same soil under
the different conditions of pulverization and consolidation.

On a previous page, after stating how trees had been killed
by heat in the Budaon district in 1868 and 1869, I said it was
remarkable the trees so killed were on low land with a
hardened surface-soil, and no trees were killed on the high
lands with a loose sandy surface-soil.

The spring level being nearer the surface-soil of the low
lands than of the high lands, it might be supposed the
trees would suffer on the low lands to a less extent than
on the higher land; but we find the reverse to be the
case. The increased amount of moisture rising to the surface
in hardened soils by capillarity and being carried away
by evaporation, accounts for the greater damage done to

UPPER INDTA. 05

trees and vegetation generally during a season of drought on
lands with a hard consolidated soil, and in the case I have
adduced killed large trees.

In lands of this description the leaves, if not taken away
for fuel or other purposes, are liable, owing to the smooth,
hardened state of the soil, to be blown away. Digging the
soil occasionally — the deeper the better — and burying in it all
leaves, twigs, &c, lying on the surface, so as to keep it open,
would, by preventing loss of moisture by capillary attraction,
ensure the safety of trees from death by drought.

In planting trees in hard land, more particularly in hot dry
climates, it is advisable to dig deeply or trench the whole
ground ; for this reason, that the water sinking into the soil is
not so soon lost as when only pits are dug for the trees. If the
trees are planted at two yards apart, and pits are dug a yard
square, only one-fourth of the land is dug. Through the un-
dug hard soil the moisture will rise by capillary attraction,
and will also abstract the water from the dug portion of the
land, and none will remain for the trees, which will suffer in
consequence.

Irrigation primarily from wells and afterwards from canals
was designed with the best intentions and hopes of success —
to prevent famines, to counteract the effects of droughts,
to insure good crops, and cheap food for the population, to
bring into cultivation land supposed to be unculturable from
want of water; and it was further supposed that a good
return in cash as interest would be made for the money spent
on irrigational works.

What has irrigation done for the country ? It has signally
failed to do all that was foretold of it. Famines have been
more frequent and more severe since canals were made.
Droughts are greater than they previously were. The air of
the whole country is more arid and injurious to animal and

F

66 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP

vegetable life than it formerly was, from the cutting down of
forest trees, &c, for burning bricks and lime for the canals
and other canal purposes, and to clear land for irrigation. A
great amount of land has become covered with reh, and is by
many persons considered to be permanently sterilized. There
is very good reason to fear there is not a single acre of land
that has been irrigated by canals for ten years, whose produce
has not very considerably diminished.

The prices of food-grains and all agricultural produce are
notoriously higher than they were. The price of labour is
consequently raised, the cost of all public and private works
very much increased, and the poorer classes generally are
worse off. Add to these the fevers and consequent prostration
of the inhabitants of the districts longest irrigated by canals,
where we are told the population is decreasing, the men
having become emasculated, &c, from the effects of fevers and
other diseases caused by irrigation.* In the face of these facts,
there are people who still talk of the so-called blessings of
irrigation. Are these blessings, or are they curses ?

Irrigation, by canals, although for the first two or three
years after it has been brought into play, it increases the
crops, eventually reduces the productive powers of the land ;
and I have frequently heard it stated by natives that where
irrigation from canals has superseded dry cultivation, and has
been carried on for ten years, the produce is reduced to less
than it was before irrigation was resorted to ; and there is
not a single field the yearly produce of which is as much after
ten years canal irrigation as it was before on the dry system.
That the produce of canal-irrigated lands does fall off, after
the first few years of irrigation, is not denied :f it is admitted
by the advocates of irrigation, who say this is the result of

* Dr. Cutliffe's report on certain districts of the Meerut divison.
t See Appendix D, p. 102.

UPPER INDIA. G/

overcropping the land ; crops being taken from the land in
more rapid succession than was formerly the case; and the fact
of its never being allowed to lie fallow has exhausted the land.
If, however, this were the real reason, land must very soon
become exhausted by bearing crops; but experiments have
been carried on in England where land has been cropped with
wheat for twenty years in succession, without manure, and
on which there has not been any material diminution of the
crop.

These experiments were made with the express purpose of
finding out to what extent the soil was deprived of its elements
of fertility by continuous growth of crops without being ma-
nured, and the result has shown that under cropping lands do
not so rapidly become exhausted as was formerly believed to
be the case.

The real reason of the falling off in the produce of canal-
irrigated lands appears to be the consolidation of the pan by
the treading of the cattle in ploughing and the hardening of
the upper soil by irrigation. This causes shallower ploughing,
the roots of plants have less depth of soil in which to search
for food, and cannot force their way into the hardened pan ;
and there is the alternate soaking and drying of the land,
during which the natural salts of the earth are gradually
brought nearer the surface by capillary attraction.

This process may go on for some years before the land
shows any excessive amount of reh on the surface ; but the
soil is steadily being poisoned by its accumulation in the
upper soil, which accounts, together with the increased hard-
ness of the soil, for the diminished fertility of lands some time
under irrigation.

Irrigation merely acts as a stimulant for a short time, and
eventually reduces the productive powers of the land. This
could be tested by comparing the produce of lands for the

f 2

68 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

first few years after irrigation with the produce of similar lands
which have been irrigated by canals ten or twenty years, and
also comparing the produce with the amount of seed sown in
these lands and in unirrigated lands. If it is found that the
produce and proportion of it to seed sown is less on land that
has been irrigated for some length of time than on land
recently brought under irrigation, it may safely be inferred
that irrigation is doing more harm than good to the country.

I have shown how irrigation, by hardening the surface-soil,
acts injuriously on the climate by increasing the heat ; it also,
by hardening and condensing the soil, and preventing the
rain falling on the surface sinking into the ground, increases
surface-drainage, and assists the desiccation of the country by
the water in the soil being better able to rise in the condensed
soil by capillary attraction than in a soil not so consolidated.
The harder and more compact the soil becomes, the less
moisture is found in the subsoil, say one or two feet below the
surface, after a lengthened period of dry weather.

The increase of indigo cultivation in the Upper Dooab, and
its successful prosecution there, is advanced as an argument
in favour of canal irrigation. Here is an extract of a letter
from an indigo-planter in that part of the country to another
indigo-planter on the subject : —

" The produce in canal-irrigated lands, in my opinion, will
be worse yearly ; what with sowing the same seed, and with
this constant cropping and flooding, the lands are being
thoroughly exhausted. I remark yearly a great falling off of
leaf, and this, by the bye, appears to be increasing. Canal
plant grows too quickly ; it is, in fact, forced, and it conse-
quently cannot draw sufficient support from the soil fast
enough to keep pace with its rapid growth. If I am right in
my conjecture, produce will get worse as the soil becomes
more exhausted," &c.

UPPER INDIA. 69

The opinion here given of a man who has been engaged for
many years in the indigo line does not agree with that of
people who talk of the successful growth of indigo in the
Upper Dooab.

One of the arguments brought forward in favour of irriga-
tion is, that there is an increasing demand for water where
canals have been established : this is brought forward by
irrigationists as evidence that the native cultivators are
beginning to appreciate irrigation. This increased demand
for water is caused by the increased impermeability of the
soil to water, and by its being more quickly evaporated
from the surface, where it is more speedily brought by
capillary attraction. The greater amount of water supplied
to the land the more it will require.

With greater power of capillarity the natural soluble salts
of the soil are more quickly brought in solution to the sur-
face, where they remain when the water is lost by evapora-
tion ; and some salts are brought to the land in the water
used for irrigation.

We never see reh on the higher lands, which are generally
of a lighter and more sandy description, and being so, are
more porous; it is always on land subjected to irrigation,
either artificial or natural, or with a hard soil that we find reh.*
The naturally irrigated lands are those lower lands on which
water is deposited by surface- drainage from the higher lands.
It appears here, also, as if two causes were at work. The
salts of the higher lands may be brought down in a state of
solution or suspension, and deposited, and the natural salts of
the lower lands may rise in the soil in solution by capillary
attraction. There are many well-known cases of inland seas
and lakes — the Dead Sea, the Caspian, and the Aral, the
waters of which are more impregnated with saline matters
* The oosur lands are of the latter description.

70 CLIMATE AND EESOURCES OF

than the ocean. These seas have no outlet, and the greater
amount of salt in their waters is the result of evaporation of
the water brought down to them, the salts brought down in
the water from the drainage basin of the rivers pouring into
them being left behind. The two former seas are below the
sea-level. The same is the case of inland lakes, many of
which are considerably above the sea-level, but which have
no surface exit for the water brought to them, and which is
lost by evaporation. The percentage of saline matters in
these inland seas and lakes is greater than in the ocean.

There are many cases of land which being under water
during the rainy seasons, dries up, and is covered with a
saline incrustation during the dry weather. These are tem-
porary shallow lakes, which lose their water in the hot
seasons by evaporation, the salts being left behind when the
water is evaporated.

Where these salt lakes and plains are below the level of
the sea, their existence there is said to be due to a subsidence
of the crust of the earth ; and where above the sea-level, they
are considered to be the beds of ancient seas, elevated by
upheaval. Is this true in every case ? May it not be that in
many cases these salt lakes and plains below the sea level are
the result of evaporation ? Should the amount of water lost
by evaporation from a lake exceed the amount supplied to it
from its drainage area, the area of the lake would contract
till an equilibrium was established between the amount of
water received by drainage and that expended by evapora-
tion. In the case of plains which dry up, there can be no
excess of evaporation over amount of water supplied ; the last
drop of moisture is dried up, and there the matter ends till there
is a fresh supply. Where salt plains occur above the sea-
level they may be the result of the gradual elevation of the
land by silt brought down from higher lands. The accumu-

UPPER INDIA. 71

lation of saline matters on their surface is the residue of
evaporation, the greater part being due to the rising, by-
capillary attraction, of the salts brought down to them from
the higher lands in former times. The beds of all lakes must
in the same way be gradually rising, from the amount of
earthy matter brought to them with the water from higher
lands. Should, by any convulsion of nature, the outlets of
the Red Sea become closed, and it be converted into an inland
lake, it is easy to suppose its level would be reduced to below
the ocean-level, from the amount of evaporation from its sur-
face exceeding the amount of water supplied to it by rivers
and springs. This lowering of the surface would go on till in
the course of time the surface area was contracted and an
equilibrium established between the amount received from
rivers and springs (i. e. surface and underground drainage)
and the amount lost by evaporation.

In the case of land irrigated from canals the same causes
are at work; the rain which falls on the hills and other
elevated lands is diverted into the canals and distributed over
the land, carrying with it what amount of salts it may con-
tain. The percentage of salts in the water may be small,
but if it is in excess of the amount required and taken up by
the crops grown on the land, it will continue increasing
until from its excess it becomes injurious.

The fact, however, remains that lands subjected to irriga-
tion in Upper India, more especially to irrigation from canals,
become after some time covered with reh. On analysis it is
found that reh may be composed —

1st. Entirely of carbonate of soda ; or,
2nd. Of carbonate and sulphate of soda; or,
3rd. Of carbonate and sulphate of soda and chloride of
sodium.
All these salts are more or less useful to vegetation ; it is only

72 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

when they are in excess that they are injurious. They have
been used as manures ; their effects have been more marked
and beneficial on light sandy soils than on soils of a more
clayey description ; their having a greater effect on the light
lands shows those lands were deficient in these salts, and as
the light sandy soils are in general higher than the stiffer
clayey soils, it favours the opinion I have given that these
salts may have been washed out of the higher lands. If such
is the case, transferring the reh from lands where it is in
excess, and using it as a manure on the light sandy lands
where it is deficient, would benefit both descriptions of land.
Acting on this I last year tried reh as a manure on several
fields of wheat and barley on high sandy land, in each case
giving a top-dressing to half of each field. In each field the
effect was very conspicuous, the parts manured with the reh
were more luxuriant, and the line was well defined where the
manured and unman ured parts of the field met.

In spite, however, of the general increase of reh on irrigated
lands, which I am glad to see is now exciting attention, further
irrigational projects have been sanctioned and are being
carried out. The injury done to the country by irrigation
cannot be denied, still, the suicidal system is to be persisted
in, as will be seen by the following extract from a resolution
of the Government of India, headed u Forecasts of Expenditure
on Railways and Irrigation Works,"

" The total expenditure required is estimated at £20,325,000.
Of this sum £4,589,000 has already been spent, and during
the next six years, including 1872-3, the outlay will be about
£8,489,000; of this last amount £625,000 will be paid by the
Puttiala and other Sikh States, and the balance of £7,864,000

UPPER INDIA. 73

must be raised by loan, or paid from surplus of ordinary
revenue over expenditure."

It also appears that during the next five years 50,000
square miles of country are to be secured from liability to
drought by irrigation works ! ! !

Will not these 50,000 square miles be covered with reh
and be a desert twenty years hence ? Why should the result
of irrigation on these lands be different to what we have seen
on similar lands? What is to be expected from increased
irrigation, but, amongst other ill results, an increased area
of land rendered sterile by reh? Man in each succeeding
generation has but a life-interest in the land, and has merely
a right to the produce of it ; he has no right to spoil the land,
to spend the principal, but is bound in honour to leave it in
as good a state for posterity, as that in which he received it
from his ancestors, to live, in fact, on the interest nature gives.
Shall we in India leave the land in as good and fruitful a state
for our successors as that we received it in from our pre-
decessors ? We see the land gradually being rendered unfit
for cultivation, a steady deterioration taking place, and still
we persevere in the system which is rendering it unculturable.
When posterity finds the diminished culturable area of the
country insufficient to supply its wants, it will pass rather a
harsh judgment on the acts of the present generation by which
its food supplies have been reduced.

There is now a famine impending, the population is crying
for food, and we persist in irrigation, which, by its injurious
action on the country, further diminishes the supply of food.

I do not know when irrigation from wells, as a method of
growing ordinary grain crops, was first established in Upper
India, but it has latterly been considered that water was the
one thing required.

In the earlier part of the present century there was not that

74 CLIMATE AND EESOUECES OP

care taken to provide water for agricultural purposes, nor was
there that anxious solicitude about the rainfall there now is,
and which may be said to have reached a state of chronic
alarm.

There was a famine — a very severe one — in 1837 or 1838,
which prevailed more especially in the Dooab, or country
between the Ganges and the Jumna. This tract of land
between these rivers was then, as now, more bare of trees
than the country immediately north of the Ganges, and irriga-
tion from wells was here in vogue before it was established in
Eohilcund. I was told some two or three years ago by some
zemindars of the Budaon district in Rohilcund that some fifty
or sixty years previous there was no irrigation in their part
of the district. u It might have been used," they said, " by
gardeners for vegetables, but was never attempted, or even
thought of, for grain crops. In those days there were no
famines ; but now, since irrigation has increased, famines are
continually recurring ; the cattle, too, in former days did not
suffer for want of forage, whereas numbers now die annually
from want of food."

This being stated by different men in different parts of the
district, showed that irrigation must have been unknown
throughout the district for corn crops at the time they alluded
to, fifty or sixty years ago. The Settlement Records of the
district show that at the former settlement of 1835, only
4,991 acres were irrigated to 633,590 unirrigated, or 1 to
126; while at the settlement lately concluded, 202,505 acres
are irrigated to 629,528 unirrigated, or 1 to 3.

Irrigation from wells in the Budaon district is said to have
been introduced by emigrants from the Dooab, where it had
been earlier practised. It would be interesting to learn when
irrigation from wells originated in the Dooab — probably it was
pretty general previous to the famine of 1837 or 1838.

UPPER INDIA.

75

Irrigation from wells would, in a country where shallow
cultivation of the soil is the rule, have the effect for some time
of increasing the produce of the land. Seeing this, the cul-
tivators would migrate from the higher lands, where the spring
level of the water was at a greater depth from the surface,
and where, from the looser and more sandy nature of the soil
and subsoil, the wells were more liable to fall in, — to the lower
lands, where the spring level of the water was nearer the
surface, where the wells would not require to be so deep, and
where, from the greater firmness of the soil, the wells were
not so liable to fall in as on the higher lands. The diminished
fertility of the higher lands from continuous cropping without
manuring, and the scanty crops raised on them, contrasting
unfavourably with the crops grown by irrigation on the lower-
lyiug lands, which had probably been uncultivated and covered
with jungle, and were freshly broken up, would be another
reason for migration to the lower lands.

The higher lands being deserted would go out of cultivation,
and the ridges round the fields would not be kept up, as was
formerly the case when under cultivation : this would induce
greater surface- drainage, and lead to greater damage from
that cause.

As irrigation extended, consolidation of the extended area
of the irrigated lands would increase and cause further sur-
face-drainage.

As the surface- drainage increased, the less water would
remain in the soil, and more would have to be supplied to
produce a crop. The more water supplied the harder and
more impermeable would the soil become; the greater the
impermeability of the soil to water supplied by irrigation the
sooner would that water be lost by evaporation, and a further
supply of water be required.

When irrigation was limited to what could be done from

76 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP

wells, the laborious systems of raising the water from them,
and the expense, was a pretty safe guarantee of water being
but sparingly used. Some canals were dug in Upper India
in the times of the Mahommedan emperors, but these do not
appear to have been used to irrigate lands under grain crops,
or, if so, to a very small extent, and their effect for good or
bad on the country generally could hardly have been felt.

This increasing demand for water would lower the spring
level, the wells would have to be deepened, the water would
have to be raised from a greater depth, entailing greater
expense, until at length canals were undertaken to supply
water at a cheaper rate than it could be raised from wells ;
these canals, by furnishing a greater supply of water, have
exaggerated the evil, and now, those portions of the country
first subjected to canal irrigation are covered with reh and are
sterile, and the produce of land more lately brought under the
influence of the canals is yearly decreasing.

This evil has been caused by thinking that engineering was
agriculture, or could supplant agriculture ; that water was
the one thing wanted for agriculture, and that water being
supplied by engineering works agriculture must succeed, — a
grievous mistake, as is evident to every one but the irriga-
tionists — a mistake which has cost an immense amount of
money ; but governments, as well as individuals, must pay
for experience.

If irrigation had been absolutely necessary, and crops could
not have been grown without its aid, there could have been
no help for it ; but when we see the evil results of irrigation,
and know that cultivation can be carried on without it, and
without injury resulting to the land — nay, further, that the
land, under another and more rational system of husbandry,
may be yearly improving in quality, the quantity of the pro-
duce being steadily increasing till the maximum per acre were

UPPER INDIA. 77

reached, it seems unaccountable why the system of irrigation
is persisted in.

That irrigation is not necessary in Upper India, is evident
from the following facts.

I have stated that, in 1835, according to Government re-
cords, only one acre was irrigated to 126 unirrigated, of the
cultivated land in the Budaon district. Now the proportion
is one acre irrigated to three unirrigated. Three-fourths of
the land is cultivated without irrigation. From a return of
surveyed and assessed area in the North- Western Provinces
for 1868-69, of a total of 24,105,849 acres cultivated, 8,912,235
are returned as irrigated and 11,919,996 as unirrigated, details
of irrigated and unirrigated not being given for five districts,
the non-irrigated being in excess of the irrigated in the pro-
portion of about 4 to 3.

These non-irrigated lands do yearly produce crops under a
most miserable and wretched system of cultivation. The crops
are poor, but that is owing to bad cultivation ; good crops
could not be expected under the circumstances ; the soil being
merely scratched two or three inches deep, the moisture in
the soil quickly dries up and the crop is poor. No attempt
has been made to teach a better style of agriculture, but irri-
gation only is recommended to supply water, to replace what
has been lost by negligent cultivation.

If, then, under a wretched, defective system of farming,
crops can be produced without irrigation, in which system,
too, no attempts are made to retain the rainfall in the soil,
what may we not expect to effect when we apply a better
system, and do our utmost to retain the rainfall in the land ?

I have mentioned that the more water is supplied to the
land by irrigation the more will the land require.

I was formerly a believer in irrigation. I went to Budaon
in 1858, and had a fair-sized garden there; up till 1865 (when

78 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

I took leave to England) I found with a pair of bullocks I
could keep it sufficiently irrigated, and the three men and a
boy I had employed in it could keep it in order. I returned
to Budaon in January, 1867, and shortly afterwards found
one pair of bullocks could not raise sufficient water, so had to
get a second pair. The water in my garden is raised from a
well in a large leathern bucket, worked by a rope over a
wheel. Three men are engaged in the operation; one to
drive the bullocks, one to land the bucket when it arrives at
the well's mouth, and one to look after the water channels
and to distribute the water to the different beds. Thus three
out of my four garden hands were employed in irrigating
the garden. One pair of bullocks worked from early in the
morning till ten or eleven o'clock, and the other pair in the
afternoon ; so the time of three men was pretty well taken
up in irrigation, and the garden was always out of order and
untidy. As the soil got more and more hardened more water
had to be given, it being more quickly lost by evaporation.
Last year, 1872, at the commencement of the rains, I had one
plot dug up some sixteen or eighteen inches deep, the lumps
of earth being well broken. I had it sown with jowar (Holcus
sorghum), and shortly before the end of the rains I had the
jowar crop cut down and buried a foot deep in the field. As
soon as the rains had finished, about 20th September, I planted
potatoes in this piece of ground.

I had just been reading a book of Mr. Holt Beevor's, in
which he recommended planting potato-sets nine or ten
inches deep in the ground. I followed his advice, although
I had never before planted potato-sets more than five or six
inches deep. The consequence of deep planting was that not
half the sets came up.

On referring to Stephen's " Book of the Farm/' I found
he said potatoes would not show above ground if planted, I

UPPER INDIA. 79

think he said, eight inches deep. I have not his book by me to
refer to, but am nearly sure eight inches is what he says.
The plants that did come up grew very well, but their tops
were killed by frost in December. The tubers, when dug up,
though numerous, were small, growth having of course ceased
when the tops were killed by frost. The reasons of partial
failure are clear : too deep planting of the sets, and want of
protection from frost.

In repeating this experiment I should plant the potato-sets
only six inches in the ground, and to save the plants from
frost, should have a good number of castor-oil or other quick-
growing plants sown on the land to check radiation of heat
from the soil at night, or prepare land somewhat shaded.
We are too apt in India to follow in gardening the directions
of English gardeners, and expose plants as much to the sun
as possible. Nearly all the vegetables and plants from tem-
perate climates succeed best in India when partially shaded.
By planting a few trees in gardens every vegetable can be
shaded for an hour or two every day, which is all that is
required in the cold weather.

To return to my experiments : the rains ceased about the
20th September. About the end of January (I cannot speak
to dates here, not having my journal with me), the rain from
20th September to that time being only four-tenths of an
inch, I took some soil from the potato plot from eight inches
below the surface. I weighed out several seers of the soil and
placed them separately exposed to the sun. The thermometer
in the sun, when I exposed the earth, stood at 103° Fahren-
heit. The several parcels of soil were exposed for two hours ;
at the end of that time the thermometer stood at 75°, the day
being cloudy. I then weighed the several parcels of soil, and
in each there was a loss of upwards of two chittacks. There
are sixteen chittacks to the seer, so the loss was more than

80 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

one-eighth of the weight, or upwards of 12^ per cent. This
soil was at eight inches from the surface ; at a few inches
lower down the soil was much raoister, but I did not test it.

To get rid of all its moisture, a substance must be exposed
for a lengthened time to a temperature of 212° Fahr. I had
not the necessary apparatus for carrying out the experiment
properly, and the soil was not exposed to a greater heat than
103° at any time during the trial.

Another plot in my garden I also had dug up rather late in
the rains, sixteen or eighteen inches deep, and sown with jowar.
I wanted here to see to what extent the land would be dried by
letting the crop stand for some time after the cessation of the
rains, so I had the crop cut and buried in the soil of the field
one foot deep, about ten days or a fortnight after the rains
had ceased. On half this plot I sowed peas in rows, and
between the rows, beetroot, radishes, turnips, &c. From the
crop of jowar having been allowed to stand after the rains
had ceased, the soil had become dry ; the water in it had been
taken up by the roots and given off from the leaves of the
jowar, consequently the seeds of vegetables which I sowed
did not germinate, from want of moisture, except in a few
shaded places. I irrigated this land once ; the ground having
been so deeply dug took a great deal of water, but with that
one watering the vegetables came to perfection, and never
appeared as if they wanted any more water.

The other half of this plot I sowed with linseed — the seed
from the former year's crop, which was raised from seed
bought in the bazar. This was treated in exactly the same
way, and was once irrigated. The crop of flax was as good
as any I have seen in England. Flax is sown in India only
for its seed, the fibre is not known as an article of any com-
mercial value by the natives, and the plant is used for fuel
or thrown away.

UPPER INDIA. 81

Another plot of my garden I had trenched about two feet
deep, also early in the rains. I did not, "in this case, grow a
crop to bury as manure. Shortly after the rains I transplanted
into some of this land cauliflowers and cabbages. When
brought from the bed where grown and planted out, each
plant got about a pint of water, and the same amount of water
two days later. Beyond this these plants were not watered.
The only rain that fell from the conclusion of the rains till the
end of January or commencement of February was only four-
tenths of an inch. The cauliflowers did not, as is usually the
case with them when irrigated, all flower at once, but lasted
for a long time : this might partly be caused by some of the
plants being more shaded than others. The great difference,
however, was in the flavour ; these cauliflowers, grown without
irrigation, being infinitely superior to the insipid, watery plants
grown by irrigation, and were not inferior in size and weight.
I had good opportunities of making comparisons, as in the
remainder of my garden I grew vegetables in the usual way
with irrigation, and from the same seeds.

The peas I have mentioned as grown being irrigated only
once, came into bearing earlier, and continued to bear some
time later, than peas of the same kinds the seed from the same
packets, sown on the same day, and irrigated ; and the flavour
of the non-irrigated, or rather once-irrigated, peas was also
superior to that of those which had to be irrigated at least
once a week to keep them alive.

It was interesting to watch these plants and compare their
appearance during growth. The unirrigated plants were
throughout more healthy, looked more vigorous, and their
leaves of a deeper, darker green than the irrigated plants.

I purposely kept water away from some of the irrigated
vegetables for a short time, and the consequence was they
soon withered away, the moisture in the ground within reach

Q

82 CLIMATE AND KESOURCES OF

of their roots being speedily dried up from evaporation, the
soil having been but shallowly cultivated.

Having succeeded in cultivating the greater part of my
garden without irrigation, I sold one pair of bullocks ; the
remaining pair had but little to do in the way of raising water.
My men were not perpetually at work at the well ; they had
time to look after the more necessary operations of the garden,
and it has been in better order than it used to be in before.

As the vegetables were used I had the ground dug up;
the difference that had taken place in the texture of the soils
where the jowar crop had been buried was most remarkable.
The soil, of the description known as " muttiar," a stiff, clayey
soil, sticky when wet, and almost as hard as stone when dry,
and which was very hard and difficult to dig and break up in
preparation for the jowar, had become quite free-working and
friable. I forgot to mention, regarding the plot on which I
planted the potatoes, that in the hot weather, previous to
digging up the soil, I had burnt some of the surface-soil and
spread the ashes over the land. There might have been two
cubic yards of ashes spread over between oOO and 400 square
yards of land. The whole of the land, which had been green
manured, was now in the condition of a light loam, the potato
plot which had had the ashes being the easier to work.

Besides these experiments in the garden, I tried a patch of
potatoes in a field. The soil here was merely deeply dug.
There was no crop buried in it. The sets were planted deeply,
at eight or nine inches ; many did not come up, but those that
did looked very healthy till killed by frost. On digging up
the potatoes, the number of tubers to each plant was great,
but they were small, the haulm having been killed by frost in
December, after which there would be no further growth.

Culinary vegetables require a greater amount of moisture,
than cereals ; and here I succeeded in growing them without

UPPEE INDIA. 83

irrigation, as I have described. If these can be grown, why
not cereals ? The fact is, that people have heard so much
about the supposed benefits of irrigation, that they do not
seem to be aware that any crop can be grown unless continu-
ally swamped with water. I doubt much if the people who
so strongly advocate irrigation have tried cultivation on a
rational system without it. While on the subject of vege-
tables, potatoes more particularly, it is worthy of remark, that
where these are grown by the natives, in the cold weather,
when frost is apprehended, they take care to keep their potato
plots well irrigated, thoroughly soaked : they say the water
being warm keeps off frost. The fact is that a soil thoroughly
soaked with water is a bad radiator of heat, and does not cool
down to the extent it would do when drier, consequently crops
growing on such a soil are not injured by frost to the extent
they would be were the soil drier. There are, however, better
and cheaper ways of guarding against frost.

In 1869 I had a piece of land of the description of soil
known as "doomat," ploughed with the country plough,
about eight or nine inches deep. This land had been culti-
vated previously under irrigation. I determined to try it
without irrigation ; but as it looked dry, I irrigated a few small
beds on one side of the field in the commencement of March.
The crop on the irrigated part became laid, and the irrigation
evidently did more harm than good. Perhaps one-twentieth
of the field was irrigated. The crop from my field was twelve-
fold the amount of seed sown, only a poor crop, but it suffered
from want of water ; the soil dried up from not having been
sufficiently deeply cultivated, and from my only having had it
banked up late in the rains, and most of the rain-water having
been allowed to run off. Poor as my crop was, the crop on
the next field, cultivated by a native in the usual way, was
worse. He sowed the same amount of seed on a smaller plot

a 2

84 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

of ground, on the same day that I did, and irrigated his field
three times ; his crop was only, according to his statement,
threefold the seed sown. My crop was at the rate of nearly
twenty-three bushels per acre, and his a little over nine
bushels.

It is necessary in estimating the value of a crop, to take
into consideration the produce per acre, the increase of pro-
duce over seed sown, the amount expended in manure, and
the cost of the cultivation of the land. I gave my field a
dressing of farmyard manure, a few broken bones, and some
brick-kiln ashes. The manuring I gave my field would have
been considered a very light one in England. I, however,
mentioned this case in a pamphlet I published in 1870, and
am told that the excess of my crop over that of the next field
was due to the " heavy dressing " of manure — no inquiries
having been made as to the amount of manure used by me.
I doubt if the cost of preparing my field and applying manure
was as much as in preparing it the usual way, as fewer plough-
ings were given. No money was expended in irrigation, and
the produce was more. That the produce was not still more
was owing to the land not being taken in hand early enough
in the season, and to its not being ploughed sufficiently deep.
Since 1869 I have had a rain crop, and a cold-weather crop,
every year from this field without irrigation, and in no single
case has the crop raised by me been in any way inferior to the
crops on the surrounding fields, although only one crop has
been taken each year from them, and in general my crops have
been markedly better. Objection was taken to this experi-
ment, as it was on a small scale. As a servant of Government I
am precluded from making any large experiments, or should
gladly have done so. I cannot, however, admit the argument
that what has succeeded on a small scale would fail on a larger
scale. The contrary is more likely to be the case. I have on

UPPER INDIA. 85

this field purposely avoided cultivating the soil above eight or
nine inches deep, as I wished to see if that was sufficiently
deep to ensure crops without irrigation. I have raised crops
fully equal to my neighbours, besides getting two crops every
year when they only got one, still I consider the depth of
eight or nine inches insufficient, and that a greater depth
would give increased crops.

I have mentioned the amount of unirrigated lands yearly
producing crops as a proof that crops can be grown without
irrigation, the reason seems to be that the unirrigated lands
are lighter and more easily and deeply worked. In the Bu-
daon district a fair amount of sugar-cane is grown on high
land which is never irrigated, and the yield is not much, if
at all, inferior to that of crops on the irrigated lands.

The land is prepared in the following way : — After a cold-
weather crop has been taken from a field in March or April
the land remains untouched till the rains, when it is dug with
mattocks, the natives say a foot or eighteen inches deep. I
doubt their being dug above eight or ten inches deep. Sometimes
ridges are made round the field to prevent loss of water by
surface- drainage, and allow the rain-water to sink into the
soil. Where the land is level, the ridges round the field are
sometimes not made, it being considered that deeply loosening
the soil will allow sufficient water to penetrate, and will retain
it. The land is ploughed occasionally through the following
cold weather to thoroughly pulverize the soil, and it is manured.
The cane is planted in February or March, which, finding
moisture in the deeply- cultivated soil, does not require irriga-
tion. Sometimes sugar-cane is taken after a rain crop without
irrigation ; in this case the land only has the rain of the cold
weather in it to supply the wants of the crop.

The juice of canes from unirrigated land is said to contain
a greater percentage of saccharine matter, and to be of a

86 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP

superior quality to that obtained from irrigated land. Here
is a plant, planted at the commencement of the hot weather,
which grows through the whole of the hot dry weather, simply
from the land being deeply cultivated, and its retaining
moisture from having been more deeply cultivated and
manured. In these unirrigated sugar-cane fields it is usual
to sow the seeds of the water-melon and other cucurbitaceous
plants which ripen their fruits during the hot weather and in
the commencement of the rains. Here is tolerable proof that
deep cultivation will retain sufficient moisture in the land for
the wants of plants, even in the hottest and driest season of
the year.

Sugar-canes and melons, plants requiring a large amount
of moisture, sown in March, six months after the end of the
rains, at the commencement of the driest time of the year,
when there is no perceptible dew, grow during the hot winds,
the melons bearing fruit, notwithstanding their being in an
isolated field, in an open plain, and surrounded by fields the
bare surface of which is in a condition to generate heat.
Still it is said that irrigation is necessary for ordinary cereals
(wheat and barley) which require less moisture, are sown
about a month after the end of the rains, when there are
heavy dews during the greater portion of their period of
growth, when the greater part of the country is under crops,
and absorbs and radiates heat, and does not generate it,
and when there is a fair amount of humidity in the air,
which would be increased were the land more deeply culti-
vated.

I have been told there must have been some peculiarity in
the soil where sugar-cane and melons were grown without
irrigation. The only peculiarity was the soil was more deeply
cultivated and manured. I recommended a thakur zemindar
to try cultivating sugar-cane on his land, substituting deep

UPPER INDIA. 87

cultivation for irrigation. This was in a part of the Budaon
district where sugar-cane is always cultivated under irrigation.
He tried, and succeeded, and told me his cane was fully as
good as any grown in the neighbourhood, and had cost him
very much less to produce. This is on stiff soil totally different
to the light soils before mentioned. The zemindar further
said that he intended to keep to the system of deep cultiva-
tion instead of irrigation for sugar-cane, and his neighbours
also were going to adopt it, as being more profitable. He
paid under lr. 8a. (less than three shillings) per acre for having
his land dug eight inches deep.

I was told in April last, on my way to England on a Penin-
sular and Oriental steamer, by an officer of high standing in
the Bengal Civil Service, who had been employed a good
deal in the Dooab, that where heaps of silt had been piled up,
taken from the canal in clearing it out, crops of wheat and
barley grew on the heaps, without irrigation, so rank that
they had to be used as green food for cattle. Here, again,
is a proof that soil loosely thrown together will retain suffi-
cient moisture by capillary attraction for the use of cereal
crops. The gentleman who gave me this information was
formerly a very stanch advocate of irrigation, but had some-
what moderated his views on the subject. The evidence I
shall now bring forward as to the power of retaining moisture
possessed by deeply-cultivated soils I take from the supple-
ment to Gazette of India of 18th January, 1873.

Extract from the Annual Administration Report of the Cotton
Department of the Bombay Presidency for 1871-72 : —

" The difference, however, in the quantity of water required
for irrigating land ploughed deeply by the English, and lightly
by the native plough, is, as mentioned by Mr. Strachan, very
remarkable. He says, speaking of the English plough, < The

88 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

cotton-plants thrive much better on land turned over with it,
and also require less water than they do on soil ploughed with
the country plough, the yield of cotton per acre on land tilled
with English tools being twelve pounds above the highest
return of any of our other fields, though land wrought with
the foreign implements was considerably inferior in quality
to the field from which our highest return by the native
system of culture was obtained. The former was four times
watered, while the latter got nine waterings all over, and part
of it got ten.9

1 ' Deep ploughing, in addition to its direct advantage to
the plant, would thus appear to result in the saving of a con-
siderable amount (say fifty per cent.) of water in irrigation,
and consequently, in addition, in a saving of cattle power,
and therefore of expense in lifting the water. It may thus,
if proved to be as advantageous as would appear, and if
largely practised in years to come, eventuate in the saving of
large sums of money in irrigation works, and even tend to
reduce the disposition to certain classes of fever now said to
be so prevalent in the neighbourhood of irrigation canals.
Further, it would appear to double the advantage received
from a fixed supply. If this be the case, the rainfall in a
district where it is naturally scanty and insufficient, would, in
effect, be artificially and indirectly doubled by this deep
ploughing and superior treatment of the soil."

In the same extract, the plough sent by the Marquis of
Tweeddale is mentioned as being " very easy to work."

The extract given about the cultivation of cotton refers
to experiments made, I believe, in the Province of Scinde,
notorious as having the smallest rainfall of any part of
India ; and here deep cultivation reduces the amount of water
required by one-half. In the greater part of Upper India

UPPER INDIA. 89

cotton does not require irrigation, as it is sown early in the
rains. I have grown it at the rate of upwards of 350 lb. of
clean cotton to the acre without irrigation. There is an idea
prevalent that Indian cotton is an annual ; but this is a mis-
take. Where allowed to stand, and protected, it will bear
the second year, but the pods are small, being dried up by
the hot winds. Were the excessive dry heat of the hot winds
diminished, the plant would doubtless bear well the second
year. In exposed cotton-fields, as the plants break into leaf
in February and March, all are eaten down by cattle, and the
plant has no chance of surviving. Sugar-cane, too, in India,
is treated as an annual. In other countries, where there are
not such excessively dry seasons, it is allowed to stand for a
second or even a third year, the suckers thrown out from the
roots giving a second and third crop.

Another proof of the power of loosened surface-soil to pre-
vent the too great loss of moisture, and to retain sufficient
in the subsoil for the purposes of vegetation, is furnished by
the "Sarkarra" grass. This grass (in appearance like the
" Pampas " grass we see in English gardens), which grows
ten or fifteen feet high, is often planted round fields on the
high land, to check the drifting of the sand. The sand accu-
mulates about the roots of the plants, and the grass, which
is cut down in the cold weather, throws out fresh shoots at
the commencement of the hot weather, and grows vigorously
through the season, from the moisture in the subsoil not being
able to rise by capillary attraction through the loose sand on
the surface. On the ridges round the irrigated fields where
there is a hard soil, it is rare to see this grass. The subsoil is
too dry for it.

There might be some reasonable excuse for canals in parts
of the country where the annual rainfall is under ten inches,
but there irrigation should be made use of to encourage the

90

CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

growth of trees, and thus increase the humidity of the climate,
when irrigation for ordinary grain crops would not be neces-
sary. The rage, however, for irrigational canals is such, that
it does not appear to be guided by the amount of annual
rainfall, and we see canals projected to irrigate parts of the
country with an ample rainfall. The Eastern Ganges Canal is
intended to irrigate portions of the Bijnore and Moradabad
districts.

According to a supplement of the North-West Provinces
Gazette, dated 15th March, 1873, the rainfall from 1st June,
1872, to 3rd March, 1873, at various points in the Bijnore

ts, was as tollows: —

Nujeebabad

77-2

Nugeena

54-6

Dhampoor

47-2

Bijnore

38-0

Chandpoor

54-3

5)2713

Average ... ... 54*26

That irrigation should be considered advisable with such a
rainfall, shows that advantage cannot be taken of it, that
it is allowed to run to waste, most probably by surface-
drainage.

Upper India is essentially an agricultural country, and must
from its geographical position depend for food for its popu-
lation on what it can itself produce. Had a mere fraction of
the amount expended on irrigational works been spent in
improving the agriculture of the country, there would not
now have been the increased demand for further engineering
works to supply water. But no attempt is made, not a rupee

UPPER INDIA. 91

is spent in improving the agriculture of the country, and it is
carried on in the old antiquated way. This arises from a
want of agricultural knowledge amongst Government officials
in India. Agriculture is not included in the various branches
of knowledge in which a civilian or a military man has to pass
an examination; it is never studied by candidates for Govern-
ment employ in India ; and consequently it is rare to find any
Government official in India who has any knowledge of either
the theory or practice of agriculture. Engineering is con-
sidered agriculture. The cost of canals for irrigation is
budgeted under the head of agricultural works, while the
truth is canals and irrigation are doing more than anything
else to destroy the agricultural prosperity of the country, and
to reduce land formerly fruitful to a state of sterility.

Statements periodically appear in the various Government
Gazettes showing the amount of land irrigated during the
week or fortnight, and the amount of water supplied; the
acreage under the various descriptions of crops is carefully
laid down, but no statement is published showing the extent
of land rendered sterile by reh, or otherwise depreciated by
the effects of irrigation. The supposed benefits are made the
most of, and the losses are not shown. A rather one-sided way
of keeping accounts, and calculated to mislead.

Improvements are being made in every direction, except
in agriculture, on which the country is dependent for its very
existence. Education is being pushed on, money can be found
for that, but as far as I am aware, as much as a five-pound
note has not been spent in agricultural education in Upper
India in the last twenty-five years. The very branch of
knowledge which is most necessary is neglected, the remark
met with when suggesting improvements in agriculture being,
depend upon it, the natives of a country are the best judges
of the style of agriculture adapted to its requirements. I con-

92 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

tinually had this remark made to me five-and-twenty years ago,
and hear the same even now. It seems to be forgotten that
the natives of Upper India have had no opportunity of judging,
not having seen any other system than that handed down to
them from their ancestors. If this argument holds good when
applied to the agriculture of a country, why not when applied
to all the other requirements of the country, — its engineering
and education for instance ? But if the old systems of agri-
culture were to be carried on in every country as handed down
from antiquity, all improvement would cease. To be con-
sistent, and to carry the system out in other branches of
knowledge, would be simply to ignore all progress and
invention. But the system of irrigation is new and has been
forced on the country. In Rohilcund it was almost unknown
fifty years ago.

Probably irrigation from wells in the Dooab, whence it
appears to have spread into Rohilcund, was the result of
the supposed benefits of irrigation being continually im-
pressed on the natives by European officials, servants of
Government, who possessed no real knowledge of agricul-
ture. There was an excuse for them, their education did
not include agriculture, and they knew no better; they
thought irrigation the one thing required, and there was not
at that time any evidence of its ill effects. In those days, in
England, breaking up the pan was considered injurious; it
is only 'lately that the benefits of deeper cultivation of the
soil have been fully understood.

It was said that by breaking up the pan useless barren
soil was brought to the surface. Mr. Wren-Hoskyns, how-
ever, has since then, in his book " Talpa, or Chronicles of a
Clay Farm," shown how the worst-looking soils, apparently
barren clays, by exposure to the air become fertile ; and it
is now generally acknowledged that nearly all subsoils, how-

UPPER INDIA. 93

ever bad they may appear, are rendered productive by ex-
posure to the air. The irrigationists say that the surface-
soil only is productive, the subsoil is bad ; if such were the
case, which I deny, there would be still greater reason for
preventing the surface-soil being washed away, and it would
be another argument against surface- drainage. Now the
ploughed arable surface-soil is washed away from the higher
lands, as the surface of a convex macadamized street, ground
to dust by the action of wheels, is washed into the gutters
by a heavy shower.

Now that the evils of irrigation are apparent throughout
the country, there seems to be no reason for persistence
in it.

Agriculture is a continually advancing science. The system
suited for a new rich soil, as freshly broken-up jungle or
forest land, is not adapted for land that has been for ages
under cultivation. The soil of freshly broken-up forest land
is chiefly composed of decayed vegetable matter, it requires
no manure, and any scratching of the surface will enable it
to carry crops. Because this was the case with every field
when first broken up and brought into cultivation, this
system is forsooth to be continued. We are to ignore the
fact that the land has been reduced in fertility by the crops
taken from it, that it has been impoverished by mismanage-
ment arising from ignorance, that the vegetable soil which
attracted water from the atmosphere and held it has disap-
peared, and we have in its place a mineral soil which has
not the same power of abstracting water from the air and
retaining it ; the physical condition of the soil has been
changed, yet no change is to be made in the manner of its
treatment, because that was sufficient in former times, under,
however, very different circumstances. The same system
being now pursued in an impoverished state of the land, as

94 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

formerly, when the land was highly fertile, leads to diminished
results, which are comparatively retrogressive.

The proportion of produce to seed sown is steadily dimi-
nishing, and probably the average produce of lands that are
unirrigated, or have been irrigated from canals for ten years,
does not exceed fivefold the seed sown.

The reason of the backward state of agriculture in Upper
India is plain. No literate natives take to farming as a pro-
fession. Nearly all the zemindars, many of them literate
men, retain some land in their own hands ; but it is merely
as a convenience — they do not farm for a livelihood. There
are no literate tenants. If a man of the ryot or tenant class
becomes proficient in reading and writing, he thinks farming
infra dig., and tries to get some appointment where reading
and writing are all that is wanted, or where less physical
exertion is required than in the prosecution of agricultural
operations. The educated natives of Upper India look to
reading and writing for a livelihood. Numbers study with
the hope of getting an appointment, with some steady emolu-
ments, in which they may pass their lives. Caste prejudices
have given way in many cases, as notably in the cases of
Hindoos of high caste, who have studied medicine and
surgery. These men have studied anatomy and practised
dissection, which is repulsive to Hindoo ideas, with the view
of qualifying as native doctors and earning a livelihood.
There is no caste prejudice against agriculture, all castes
engage in it ; but those who subsist by agriculture are the
poorest of the classes to which they belong. A ten- acre farm
held by one person would be considered in many parts of
Upper India a large holding. Several members of a family
or several friends will conjointly take a greater breadth of
land, but the land is generally let in very small holdings.
There are no tenants of any decent status in society or of

UPPER INDIA. 95

considerable means engaged in farming. The educated
natives do not engage in agriculture because they do not
see how a livelihood is to be made by it ; they do not see
any person of a decent status in society living by the profits
of farming, and do not understand how it can be done. Were
they shown that a respectable livelihood could be gained by
farming, numbers of the more respectable classes, more
especially the country residents, would engage in it. They
can only learn how farming can be profitably carried on by
the establishment of farms, attached to which should be
schools of agriculture, where the theory and practice of agri-
culture should be thoroughly demonstrated, or by the en-
couragement of European colonization in India.

There are numbers of Europeans engaged in tea and coffee
cultivation and the manufacture of indigo in India, and there
seems to be no valid reason why Europeans should not be able
equally well, if not better, to look after a farm with a more
varied produce. The men engaged in tea and coffee-growing
and in making indigo have all their eggs in one basket.
Should anything occur to cause a reduced produce, or should
the state of the market be unsatisfactory for the article they are
engaged in producing, they have nothing else to fall back on.

The case is different in farming, the products are so various,
particularly in India and hot countries where different crops
can be grown at different seasons, that should the prices of any
one species of produce be unfavourable, the loss on that would
be compensated by extra gain on the others. Money laid out
in farms and schools of agriculture would be directly reproduc-
tive, leaving out of consideration the immense benefit that
would accrue indirectly to the country generally from their
establishment, which, however, should be the grand object of
their existence.

The chief subjects to be taught should be retention of the

96 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF

rain-water by banking the fields, and deep cultivation, and
the use of manures, more particularly green manuring. With
these alone the produce of grain-food for man could be
raised from about fivefold the amount of seed, which perhaps
it now is, to from twenty to fifty or even one hundredfold, which
would be amply remunerative. The next object after growing
food for the population should be forage crops, or food for
cattle, and commercial requirements ; these being introduced
and grown in rotation with cereals, would increase the crops of
the latter.

The soil of a great part of Upper India is a deep alluvial
deposit, and merely requires the addition of vegetable matter
to make it a most fertile loam. With proper cultivation as
good crops could be raised in Upper India as in any part of
the world, and it is only the backward state of agricultural
knowledge that prevents its being one of the chief granaries
of the world.

With the barren, unculturable lands planted with trees, and
the unirrigated cultivated lands deeply cultivated, the soil being
kept open by judicious manuring, a great improvement in the
climate must follow. The temperature of April, May, and June,
now the season of the hot winds, would be greatly reduced,
and probably the greatest heat we should experience in those
months would never exceed 100° Fahr. in the shade, and that
only for a couple of hours in the day, while the nights, morn-
ings, and evenings would be cool and pleasant. That 100°
Fahr. would be the maximum heat in the shade during
the hottest season of the year may, I think, be fairly inferred
from the study of the climate of other countries, and a con-
sideration of the causes which increase or diminish the tem-
perature of a country. In Bengal, away from the influence of
the action of the sea on temperature, we find it is never neces-
sary to keep the glass doors and windows of houses shut to

UPPER INDIA. 97

exclude the heat, the temperature seldom rising above 95° ;
whereas in Upper India at 6 or 8 degrees further north, and
from 400 to 1,000 feet above the sea-level, the doors, &c., of
houses have to be closed during the hot weather, from 8 or 9
a.m. till sunset every day, and sometimes have to be kept shut
all night for that purpose. This is owing to the state of the
surface of the country, and its action on the temperature,
which can be altered.

At the same time and in the same way that the tempera-
of the hot weather is reduced, the temperature of the rains
would probably be reduced some 10 degrees; and if we are
to be guided by the action of forests in equalizing temperature
in other countries (reducing the extreme heat of summer and
modifying the cold of winter), we may infer that the injurious
effects of the frosts of the cold weather might be less.

With the hot- weather temperature reduced and the climate
moderated by the methods I have suggested, improvement
will take place in all the agricultural produce of the country.
If we take wheat as an example, we find that the wheat pro-
duced in Upper India has a shrivelled shrunken appearance,
and is not the plump grain we find in countries with a moister
climate. The shrivelled state of the grain is more marked
when the wind sets in steadily from the west, before the crops
are ripe ; and this early setting in of the west wind is dreaded
by the cultivators, as it greatly reduces the weight of the
crop. The grain is dried up by the hot dry air before it
has time to swell properly, as it would under more favourable
conditions, i.e. with a more genial and less arid state of the
atmosphere. With the temperature of the hot weather reduced,
numbers of food-producing plants might be introduced into
and flourish in the plains of Upper India, as, for instance,
the Spanish chestnut, also many fruit-trees, and the cultiva-
tion of the tea-plant might be possible throughout the country.

98 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF UPPER INDIA.

Silk, too, might be a staple product ; the only hindrance to its
production now being that the worms are dried up, baked to
death, by the dry heat of the hot weather.

Under the system I have sketched out of improving the
climate by planting and proper cultivation of the soil, I believe
there would be no fear of a scarcity of rainfall or famine. A
scanty rainfall in any one year would not so injuriously affect
the country, as the amount of moisture held in the soil by
capillary attraction from the preceding year would be avail-
able for the support of crops ; and with it in reserve a very
small rainfall would suffice. The longer the system had been
pursued the less chance would there be of a scanty rainfall,
and the less would it be felt when it did occur. With a
flourishing state of agriculture we should hear no more of
famines, commercial stagnation, floods ravaging the country,
or of any of the evils which are now the results of irrigation
and surface-drainage.

ADDENDUM.

Another result of the desiccation of the country from the
destruction of forests is the increased damage done by locusts,
nights of which are more numerous now than they formerly
were. Marsh, in " Man and Nature," says : " The insects
most injurious to rural industry do not multiply in or near
woods. The locust, which ravages the east with its voracious
armies, is bred in vast open plains, which admit the full heat
of the sun to hasten the hatching of the eggs, gather no
moisture to destroy them, and harbour no birds to feed upon
the larvae." And again he says : u It is only since the felling
of the forests of Asia Minor and Cyrene that the locust has
become so fearfully destructive in those countries.

In Upper India we find locusts feed by preference on the
tops of the highest trees ; where, however, there are different
kinds of trees of equal height, there are some which they
prefer. Where the country is well wooded, locusts almost
confine their ravages to the trees, and hardly touch the crops,
and there is not that damage done to the crops that there is
in a part of the country devoid of trees. This fact furnishes
another reason for planting trees in the uncultivated lands
throughout the country.

APPENDICES.

A (page 13).
Mrs. Somerville, in her book, " Connexion of the Physical
Sciences/' says, pp. 284-285, " On land the temperature
depends upon the nature of the soil and its products, its
habitual moisture or dryness ; " and, after describing the
effects of the Sahara in raising the temperature, says : " On
the contrary, vegetation cools the air by evaporation, and the
apparent radiation of cold from the leaves of plants, because
they absorb more caloric than they give out ; M and again says :
" Forests cool the air also, by shading the ground from the
rays of the sun, and by evaporation from the boughs." On
page 233 we have : " The radiating power of a surface is
inversely as its reflecting power, and bodies that are most
impermeable to heat, radiate least ; " and on page 248 :
' ' When radiant heat falls upon a surface, part of it is reflected,
and part of it is absorbed ; consequently, the best reflectors
possess the least absorbing powers."

B (page 51).
Some better method of disposal of town filth should be
adopted than polluting rivers with it. Let it be applied to
fields surrounded by ridges from which there is no escape by
surface-drainage, so that it cannot fall into the rivers, and let
the amount applied to the land be not in excess of what crops
grown on the land can assimilate, and all will be well. In
India, the high price of fuel increases river-pollutiou. The

102 CLIMATE AND KESOURCES OP

Hindoos, finding fuel expensive for cremation, dispose of
more of their dead by throwing them into the rivers.

C (page 54).
On the occasion of the reading of a paper by W. Taylor,
Esq., " On Famines in India, their Eemedy and Prevention,"
at the room of the Society of Arts, on 18th December, 1873,
it was stated in the discussion that followed the reading of
the paper, that on the 15th August last the floods were
higher than usual over a great part of the country which two
months later was, and now is, threatened with famine from
drought. This shows how quickly the water ran off and was
lost, and the land became dried up.

D (page 66).

Captain Thomason, R.E., an officer of great experience,
who has been employed for years on irrigational canals, thus
writes of reh : — " In the interests of irrigation, can there be
a more important question to settle than the treatment of the
f reh ' lands, extending year by year throughout our irrigated
districts, and rendering our irrigation worse than useless ? M
In a note to the above paragraph he says, "Vide Mr. Sherer's
report on the Western Jumna Canal districts, submitted to
Government in 1856-57, and many other reports ; " and adds :
" From personal observation I can testify to the rapid extension
of < reh > land in the Bareilly district, from 1863 to 1868."

Captain Thomason recommended subsoil-drainage and deep
cultivation as a remedy. The drainage where tiles were used,
cost, according to his estimate, 20 Rs. or £2 per acre.
50,000 square miles are, according to " Forecast of Expenditure
on Canals" (mentioned on page 73), to be secured from liability
to drought by irrigation- works, at an expenditure of some
£20,000,000. If by this it is meant that an area of 50,000

UPPER INDIA. 103

square miles, or 32,000,000 acres,is to be irrigated at the above
cost, then the cost of irrigational works is, in the first case,
12s. 6d. per acre; but as irrigation produces "reh "on the
surface of the land, it is suggested an expenditure of £2 per
acre be incurred to get rid of the reh. A certain sum having
been spent in endeavours to improve the land, which
endeavours, instead of improving, have caused deterioration,
it is proposed to expend more than three times the original
sum in endeavours to mitigate the injurious effects of the
first injudicious expenditure. Leaving aside the question of
expense, where could the fuel be found to burn the tiles?
Supposing subsoil-drainage were carried out, and the reh were
carried away by the drains, would this be beneficial or hurtful to
the country? It is generally admitted that reh rises by capillary
attraction from the subsoil in a state of solution. Such being
the case — and I believe it is not disputed, the lands now
covered with reh, and sterile from its effects, must have held
the reh (except such as may have been brought in the water
used for irrigation) in the subsoil at the time they were fertile
and bearing good crops, viz. the first few years after they
were irrigated ; thus showing that land containing the salts
composing " reh " in the subsoil, are not sterile but fertile.
Getting rid of the reh by the drains might be the means of
securing good crops for a few years; but as the salts composing
reh are in moderate quantities absolutely necessary for vegeta-
tion, we might be securing a temporary benefit at the cost of
a permanent loss to the country. We might benefit the
present generation by ruining posterity.

Many people look on lands once covered with reh as irre-
claimably barren. I do not take such a pessimist view of the
case ; I look on reh as a safeguard thrown up by nature to
protect herself from further spoliation, and as a warning to
man not to violate her laws ; and I believe that by judicious

104 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF UPPER INDTA.

management and giving up irrigation, the reh- covered lands
may be made to produce double or quadruple the crops they
ever did with irrigation. Proper management is all that is
required. We must undo all that has been done by irrigation
to these lands, and commence a new system. By deep culti-
vation and manuring we must keep the soil loose and open,
and thus we shall prevent water and the salts in solution rising
to the surface by capillary attraction, and at the same time, by
preventing loss of rain-water by evaporation, we shall encourage
the downward nitration of the water, and replenish the deeper
springs, and the salts will remain diffused in the soil at a
sufficient depth from the surface to supply the wants of plants
for ages, and still not be in such excess in the upper soil
as to be injurious. A few experiments carefully carried out
would prove the correctness or otherwise of the system I
advocate, and their cost would be trifling.

Kain-water has two duties to perform, — to furnish moisture
for crops, and to replenish the deep-seated springs. Where
drainage, either surface or subsoil, is carried out throughout
a country, the springs must suffer, and the water-supply will
be deficient in dry seasons.

THE END.

/,

WYMA.V AM) SONS, PIUNTERS, GREAT QUKEN STRKKT, W.f.

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