THE AGRICULTURAL PESTS OF INDIA. 79 



Wild Beasts Destroyed, Rewards Paid. 



1882-83. Rs. 



Elephants, ... 4 100 



Tigers, . . . .1,825 48,487 



Leopards, . . . .4,349 64,653 



Bears, . . . .1,599 7,039 



Wolves, . . . .6,239 21,555 



Hysenas, . . . .1,569 5,223 



Other wild beasts, . . . 4,304 4,948 



Total, . . 19,889 1,52,005 



Snakes, .... 412,782 22,353 



In India, after droughts and famines, the locusts and 

 the Golunda meltada field rats migrate in myriads, eating 

 up every green thing. Such migration of rats occurred 

 in the Peninsula in 1826. After the famine of 1877- 

 1878, the Bombay Government gave a rupee for every 

 hundred tails, and it is said 11,000,000 were destroyed. 

 In 1875-76 rats infested the watersheds of the Salwin 

 and Sitang. According to Bancroft, rats were driven 

 from parts of Jamaica, utterly exterminated by an ant, 

 to which the colonists gave the name of Tom Baffles, but 

 the remedy was worse than the disease. But what India 

 has most to dread is drought. 



In the Indian famine of 1877-78, in the Peninsula 

 of India, millions of the inhabitants, and the bulk of 

 their horned cattle, perished. Mr. Forbes tells us, on the 

 authority of the Batavia HandelsUad, that in Java the 

 years 1877 and 1878 were marked by great droughts. 

 From that of the latter year the loss on the coffee estates 

 from the Hemileia vastatrix, or leaf blight, was ten million 

 guilders ; on sugar, seven ; on tobacco, five ; and on rice, 

 fifteen equal in all to a loss, in English money, of 

 3,000,000. Along with these disastrous seasons came 

 a terrible epizootic among the buffaloes, which had not 



