UPPEE INDIA. 



irrigation, as I have described. If these can be grown, why 

 not cereals ? The fact is, that people have heard so much 

 about the supposed benefits of irrigation, that they do not 

 seem to be aware that any crop can be grown unless continu- 

 ally swamped with water. I doubt much if the people who 

 so strongly advocate irrigation have tried cultivation on a 

 rational system without it. While on the subject of vege- 

 tables, potatoes more particularly, it is worthy of remark, that 

 where these are grown by the natives, in the cold weather, 

 when frost is apprehended, they take care to keep their potato 

 plots well irrigated, thoroughly soaked : they say the water 

 being warm keeps off frost. The fact is that a soil thoroughly 

 soaked with water is a bad radiator of heat, and does not cool 

 down to the extent it would do when drier, consequently crops 

 growing on such a soil are not injured by frost to the extent 

 they would be were the soil drier. There are, however, better 

 and cheaper ways of guarding against frost. 



In 1869 I had a piece of land of the description of soil 

 known as "doomat," ploughed with the country plough, 

 about eight or nine inches deep. This land had been culti- 

 vated previously under irrigation. I determined to try it 

 without irrigation ; but as it looked dry, I irrigated a few small 

 beds on one side of the field in the commencement of March. 

 The crop on the irrigated part became laid, and the irrigation 

 evidently did more harm than good. Perhaps one-twentieth 

 of the field was irrigated. The crop from my field was twelve- 

 fold the amount of seed sown, only a poor crop, but it suffered 

 from want of water ; the soil dried up from not having been 

 sufficiently deeply cultivated, and from my only having had it 

 banked up late in the rains, and most of the rain-water having 

 been allowed to run off. Poor as my crop was, the crop on 

 the next field, cultivated by a native in the usual way, was 

 worse. He sowed the same amount of seed on a smaller plot 



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