[ 41 J 



must arrive wlien, by continually taking out a great 

 deal and putting back very little, both purse and soil 

 are exhausted. 



Unlike the European peasant, the Indian husband- 

 man more or less fully realises the evils of this system ; 

 it is only on compulsion that he robs his mother soil, 

 and it is only in comparatively quite recent times that 

 this spoliation has acquired the alarming intensity that 

 now characterises it. 



Only fifty years ago, when jungles and grazing 

 grounds abounded, when cattle were more numerous, 

 when much wood was available as fuel, there was 

 actually a much greater amount of manure available 

 and a very much smaller number of fields on which to 

 spread it. 



The evil is a growing one, it is one of gigantic 

 magnitude, and though, like all great causes, it ope- 

 rates slowly, no one who has really watched agricul- 

 ture for years in this country can doubt that its effects 

 are already showing far and wide ; no one who under- 

 stands the question can doubt that they will develop 

 with most disastrously increasing virulence as years 

 run on. 



Here, again, is a question in regard to which there 

 can be no doubt. How quickly or how slowly a per- 

 petually cropped and rarely, and then only scantily, 

 manured field will become thoroughly exhausted and 

 unculturable, depends, of course, on what we may 

 term the original capital of that field, and on the pro- 

 portion that may exist between the disbursements and 

 receipts, but it being admitted that the former are 

 and have been for years greatly in excess of the latter. 



