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been raised in tlie Doab on the first introduction of 

 canal irrigation, owing to the first slender doses of 

 potash and chloride of sodium. 



But nature works on blindly and unceasingly. The 

 water below searches out one by one each soluble par- 

 ticle in excess of the particular soil's capacity of re- 

 tention, and, as it slowly creeps up by capillary 

 attraction, leaves these ever behind ib on the surface. 



Time passes on, some crops begin to be unprofitable ; 

 in the hottest time of the year, a glimmer as though 

 of a hoar frost overspreads the land. The land grows 

 worse and worse, but ever night and day nature works 

 slowly on, and the time comes when, abandoned by 

 the cultivator, the land glitters white and waste as 

 though thickly strewn with crisp, new-fallen snow ; 

 never, alas ! to melt away, except under the rays of 

 science. 



Along the little old Western Jumna Canal, thou- 

 sands of fields are to be seen thus sterilised. Along 

 the course of the mighty Ganges Canal — a work as it 

 were but of yesterday — the dreary wintry-looking 

 rime is already in many places creeping over the 

 soil. 



Come it quickly or come it slowly, the ultimate 

 result here also is certain ; and, unless a radical 

 change is effected in existing arrangements, we know, 

 as definitely as we know that the sun will rise to-mor- 

 row, that the time must come when some of the richest 

 arable tracts in Northern India will have become 

 howling saline deserts. 



The task, no doubt, looked at from a distance, seems 

 almost a hopeless one, but when it is more closely 



