== 468 = 
that is in most things extremely efficient and the result of ages of 
inherited experience. But in questions of Insect-pests and the like, 
this experience is dominated by what are, to us, totally erroneous 
ideas about life and what is also, to us, an incomprehensible 
aversion to directly taking life. An intelligent cultivator, growing 
sugar-cane under irrigation on an extremely sound system with 
good manure, believes that the Cane-borer comes with the well 
water used for irrigation; he has no conception that it has hatched 
from an egg, that the Caterpillar turns to a chrysalis and so to a 
Moth, that the Moths are male and female, couple and lay eggs. 
He regards the whole thing as a mystery, not comparable with the 
life of any other animal; he will, as likely as not, call in a priest 
to check it; the priest will perhaps write four texts from holy 
writings, place them one at each corner of the field to confine the 
evil influence and then remove one to let out the influence which 
the texts have incommoded. Or he will pay a man of certain caste 
to plough a line across the field at night, the man having to be 
starck naked. In some parts Locusts are believed to be the incarn- 
ation or the manifestation of a particular deity and for each one 
killed, a hundred will come; it is quite likely that this has occurred, 
a small swarm of which a few were killed being followed later by 
a much larger swarm, but where we see no connection, he sees a 
definite sequence of events. A case came up where a man freed his 
rice field of a pest by a simple mechanical method; his crop 
benefitted but soon after his cow died, and to that village the one 
was a consequence of the other. It will take much to convince that 
village that crop pests can or may be checked. This attitude 
towards crop pests, bound up with the inherited instincts and 
religious beliefs of the people, gives way when the cultivator can be 
shown the results of checking pests; but to do this in every village 
of India, to wait till a definite case comes and then to prove that 
it was the treatment that checked the pest is an impossible task. 
With a well educated community, much can be done by personal 
influence, by the former giving it a trial and being able to see for 
himself the rationale of the treatment; even to begin to do this 
with the Agricultural Community of India cannot be thought of 
yet. We cannot here dwell on this point, though it is the crucial 
one in India, the very little we have said cannot convey an 
impression of the attitude which is ingrained in nearly all classes 
in India and it can be only realised by actual contact with the 
people themselves; we cannot and do not really know what their 
