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Undoubtedly the introduction of this system which, 

 while hugely benefiting agriculture, would perhaps do 

 more than any other conceivable measure to restrict 

 the ravages of cholera, should never be lost sight of. 

 Its importance cannot be over-rated, but the immediate 

 difficulties to be encountered, and the prejudices to be 

 overcome, are (or seem to be, for this may be partly a 

 chimera) so great that action in this direction may 

 reasonably be postponed while there is so much else 

 immediately practicable to be done. 



Setting this aside, the main causes of the scarcity 

 of manure are the comparative paucity of cattle, and 

 the almost universal use of their dung as fuel. 



The paucity of cattle is due almost entirely to the 

 incredible losses of stock sustained from starvation 

 and different forms of cattle disease. The consump- 

 tion of their droppings as fuel is due to the impossi- 

 bility, in some places, or expense, in others, of 

 procuring wood. 



Over a great portion of the empire, the mass of the 

 cattle are starved for six weeks every year. The hot 

 winds roar, every green thing has disappeared, no hot- 

 weather forage is grown, the last year's fodder has 

 generally been consumed in keeping the well bullocks 

 on their legs during the irrigation of the spring crops, 

 and all the husbandman can do is just to keep his 

 poor brutes alive on the chopped leaves of the few 

 trees and shrubs he has access to, the roots of grass 

 and herbs that he digs out of the edges of fields, and 

 the like. 



In good years he just succeeds ; in bad years, the 

 weakly ones die of starvation. But then come the 



