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But what can be expected under existing condi- 

 tions ? Annually a rigid Lent, too often merging into 

 actual starvation, followed by a sudden gorging with 

 unwholesome food. The people are keenly alive to 

 the dangers of such alternations, and labour hard to 

 prevent the latter, or they would not keep a single 

 head alive ; but despite all their care, their losses are 

 enormous. In bad years, whole provinces are devas- 

 tated. But a few years ago more than half the cattle 

 in Oudh were lost during two successive bad seasons. 



And be it noted that it is not only the supply of 

 manure that this fearful mortality amongst the cattle, 

 and their resulting paucity, so greatly restricts ; it is 

 the little hoarded capital of the peasant, the very main- 

 spring of agriculture in India, that is thus flung away. 

 There is nothing new in all this ; everybody in India, 

 Government and people, all know it, after a fashion, 

 but beyond putting a single veterinary surgeon in a 

 couple of provinces to try and train a score of native 

 cow doctors, nothing is done. Nothing ever will be 

 done until there is a special and properly organised 

 department, whose sole business it is to look after it. 



Some are cautious : " We must begin gradually," 

 say they; " Rome was not built in a day," &c. Every 

 one knows these nauseating commonplaces by rote. 



Well and good, they make their infinitesimally 

 minute beginning, but the moment you desire to go 

 on, there is the cry of expense, "We cannot afford it." 



The policy of the Government of India in these 

 matters for the last twenty-five years can only be 

 likened to that of some nobleman, who, with his mag- 

 nificent palace slowly burning beneath his gaze, first, 



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