UPPER INDIA. 35 



injurious effects. The plantain being so useful both to man 

 and beast, its propagation should be encouraged on all lands 

 where it will grow. It flourishes best on low, moist lands, 

 such as the borders of tanks, jheels and swamps, and a fringe of 

 these plants round such places would prevent the spreading 

 of malaria and render the neighbourhood more healthy. Care 

 should be taken, in the first instance, to select plants bearing 

 a good description of fruit, as there are some inferior sorts 

 of plantain undistinguishable by the appearance of the plant 

 which are perfectly useless as food, from the amount of seeds 

 they contain. In a warm, damp climate the plantain will bear 

 fruit in from one to one and a half years ; in the dry climate 

 of Upper India it does not bear under two or three years. 



Another cause of surface-drainage originates in the higher 

 lands. These lands may be twenty, fifty, or even a hundred 

 feet higher than the level of the nearest rivers into which 

 they drain. In former times these lands appear to have been 

 regularly cultivated, and the fields composing them were 

 separated from one another by ridges or banks, perhaps from 

 one to two feet wide and six inches or a foot high, the remains 

 of which can be distinctly traced where not too deeply covered 

 with sand. 



The higher parts of these lands the water-shed often 

 consists of blowing sands, regular inland dunes, which are year 

 by year increasing, and gradually covering the neighbouring 

 fields. These dunes, composed as they are of loose, blowing 

 sand, readily admit rain-water into them, and, except in heavy 

 downpours, not much runs off the surface, where tolerably 

 level ; where, however, the surface of the land between the 

 sandhills has become exposed by the blowing away of the 

 drift-sand, it collects the water falling near, forms water- 

 courses, and eventually ravines ; the hardened surface, where 

 exposed, is more like a concrete than a soil, and has the 



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