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and that this disproportion is increasing, the ultimate 

 result is certain. 



That the gradual (and perhaps later suddenly rapid) 

 deterioration of the major portion of our cultivated 

 lands is, unless a totally new system be inaugurated, 

 inevitably impending, can be denied by no one con- 

 versant with the subject. 



It is impossible for Government to disbelieve this ; 

 they may think, and perhaps rightly, that it will last 

 their time, but they cannot doubt as to what they are 

 preparing for their successors. 



And it is not as in other countries, where the land 

 is private property. It is its own land that Grovern- 

 ment is allowing to go to ruin, its own financial blood 

 that it lets run to waste. This is the sole goose that 

 ever would or could lay golden eggs for us, and we are 

 smiling as it is slowly starved before us, and will 

 not make a single effort worthy of the name to arrest 

 the catastrophe. 



Yet again, from another and distinct source, ruin 

 and desolation, more palpable and speedy in its course, 

 though more limited in its operation, await vast tracts 

 in Northern India, unless the voice of reason can gain 

 a hearing and science be allowed to guide agriculture. 



In Oudh, the Panjab, and the North- West Pro- 

 vinces, the soils mostly contain an appreciable admix- 

 ture of saline particles. With the construction of 

 high-level canals, the subsoil water level is raised, the 

 surface flooded, the earth yields up its soluble salts to 

 the water, which again restores them (but on the sur- 

 face) as it passes away in vapour. At first the result 

 may be good, and marvellous are the crops that have 



