66 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OP 



vegetable life than it formerly was, from the cutting down of 

 forest trees, &c., for burning bricks and lime for the canals 

 and other canal purposes, and to clear land for irrigation. A 

 great amount of land has become covered with reh, and is by 

 many persons considered to be permanently sterilized. There 

 is very good reason to fear there is not a single acre of land 

 that has been irrigated by canals for ten years, whose produce 

 has not very considerably diminished. 



The prices of food-grains and all agricultural produce are 

 notoriously higher than they were. The price of labour is 

 consequently raised, the cost of all public and private works 

 very much increased, and the poorer classes generally are 

 worse off. Add to these the fevers and consequent prostration 

 of the inhabitants of the districts longest irrigated by canals, 

 where we are told the population is decreasing, the men 

 having become emasculated, &c., from the effects of fevers and 

 other diseases caused by irrigation.* In the face of these facts, 

 there are people who still talk of the so-called blessings of 

 irrigation. Are these blessings, or are they curses ? 



Irrigation, by canals, although for the first two or three 

 years after it has been brought into play, it increases the 

 crops, eventually reduces the productive powers of the land ; 

 and I have frequently heard it stated by natives that where 

 irrigation from canals has superseded dry cultivation, and has 

 been carried on for ten years, the produce is reduced to less 

 than it was before irrigation was resorted to ; and there is 

 not a single field the yearly produce of which is as much after 

 ten years canal irrigation as it was before on the dry system. 

 That the produce of canal-irrigated lands does fall off, after 

 the first few years of irrigation, is not denied :f it is admitted 

 by the advocates of irrigation, who say this is the result of 



* Dr. Cutliffe's report on certain districts of the Meerut divison. 

 t See Appendix D, p. 102. 



