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parts of tlie country, if not everywHere, greatly 

 limited in its application by tradition and superstition. 

 Innumerable quaint couplets, to whicli a certain reve- 

 rence is attached, deal with agricultural matters. 

 These, in Upper India at any rate, are true " house- 

 hold words " amongst all tillers of the soil. These 

 govern their actions to a great extent, and often lead 

 them wrong against their better judgment. They 

 take omens of all kinds to guide their choice of crops 

 and other operations of husbandry, and though some 

 few of the more intelligent only act upon the results 

 of these divinations when they coincide with their own 

 views, the masses are blindly guided by them. 



So, then, it is not only external disadvantages 

 against which the Indian cultivator has to contend, 

 it is not only that his knowledge is still in the primary 

 experience stage, but that even this knowledge is often 

 rendered of no avail by the traditions of anj imme- 

 morial religion of agriculture. 



It is necessary to realise* this (of which few Euro- 

 peans ever even hear), as it is one great practical 

 difficulty against which agricultural reform in India 

 will have to contend. 



What other Grovernment is so favoured as that of 

 India? A fertile soil, and nine-tenths of it (excluding 

 Lower Bengal) still so far the property of the State, 

 that the latter can, and does, levy a full rent on all 



* To give some more definite idea of this superstition, a brief 

 extract from an unpublished Memoir on the Agriculture of the 

 Doab is reproduced as Note A., at the close of this paper. 



