51 



Mr. Graham writing in 1797, i.e.^ nearly a century ago, says 

 of Salem : "A person who had not experienced the contrary 

 would be led to suppose that the Baramahal possessed peculiar 

 advantages of situation, and that, lying between Mysore and 

 , the Carnatic, the soil would experience the best effects from a 

 participation of both monsoons. We know, however, that the 

 rains are extremely precarious, and that when they do fall, they 

 are either partial and scanty, or if plentiful, that the season 

 has passed ; and the only purpose they serve, as at present, 

 is from their violence to destroy half the tanks in the country. 

 How often has the farmer, deceived by a passing shower, 

 imprudently committed his seed to the ground, and how often 

 have his hopes of a return been blasted by a succeeding 

 drought, equally fatal to his crop as to his cattle ! How 

 frequently have we observed whole fields of grain apparently 

 vigorous, and rapidly advancing to perfection, destroyed in one 

 night by devouring insects, and the seemingly full-eared 

 cumbu, which one would pronounce in a few days fit for 

 reaping, exhibiting when rubbed between the hands nothing 

 but a useless powder, the consequence of its premature forma- 

 tion ! " I have examined the accounts given in the old reports ^^ 

 regarding the character of the agricultural season each year 

 from the beginning of the century, and I find that there is no 

 reason to believe either that the rainfall has diminished or that 

 unfavorable seasons are more frequent now than in the past. 

 There were then as prolonged and frequent droughts as now. 

 If the drought was of short duration and affected small portions 

 of country, the people managed to get on ; if, however, by a 

 combination of circumstances the drought continued over two 

 or three years and affected simultaneously large portions of the 

 country, the result was famine. The destruction of forests 

 appears, however, to have affected the supply of subsoil water 

 in the vicinity of hills and led to the drying up of streams fed 

 by springs. Dr. Brandis remarks that " in the Coimbatore 

 district the Noyel river, the main channel of which rises in 

 the Bolampatti valley, probably has less water now in the dry 

 season than it had 30 years ago. In the Palladam taluk the 

 old anicuts now remaining unused attest this." The import- 

 ance of forests in subserving the needs of agriculture cannot 

 of course be over-estimated, but there is, on the whole, no 



-^ Surgeon- General Edward Balfour, after instituting careful enquiries in 1849, came 

 to the conclusion that ' ' it may be confidently stated that in India within the present 

 century, the rainfall has not diminished, nor has the quantity annually falling now 

 become more uncertain, but that man, partly ignorant and wholly reckless, has denuded 

 the soil o'iits trees and shrubs and bared the surface to the sun's rays, thus depriving the 

 country of its conservative agents and making the extremes of floods and droughts of 

 more frequent Occurrence and more severe." 



