UPPER INDIA. 21 



there is no flat sole to the plough, and the implement itself is 

 very light. In ploughing a piece of ground, drawing the fur- 

 rows six inches apart, the bullocks taking steps of two feet, 

 and two bullocks yoked to the plough, as is universally the 

 case in Upper India, there will be four footprints on every 

 square foot of ground every time the land is ploughed. This 

 is only taking into calculation the footprints of the cattle in 

 ploughing. This repeated every time the land is ploughed, 

 some ten or twelve times a year, and having gone on for ages, 

 must have consolidated the soil below the loosened arable 

 surface- soil, the more so as advantage is always taken of a 

 wet state of the soil for ploughing the land. 



When it is required in India to make the bed of a tank 

 watertight, it is recommended to keep it wet and turn buffaloes 

 into it, as their treading effectually puddles the bed of the 

 tank and prevents water being lost through it by percolation. 

 In the same way that the treading of the bed of a tank by 

 buffaloes prevents escape of water, so does the treading of 

 cattle prevent water falling on the surface sinking to the sub- 

 soil. The existence of the pan is doubted by some persons, 

 who consider it a myth, but its reality, and its greater density, 

 compared with the subsoil below it, are easily proved by testing 

 it with water, and watching how long it requires to disappear 

 by absorption in the soil. 



I tried with a tin tube three or four inches in diameter. 

 First, I had two or three inches of the surface-soil of a field 

 (the soil annually disturbed by the plough) scraped off. I 

 pressed the tube firmly on, or rather in, the soil, and poured 

 into it a certain amount of water. I tried again, removing twelve 

 and fifteen inches of the soil. This experiment was repeated 

 a number of times, and invariably with the same result; the 

 water was more quickly absorbed where I had a greater depth 

 of soil removed, than when only the surface-soil disturbed by 



