UPPER INDIA. 87 



cultivation for irrigation. This was in a part of the Budaon 

 district where sugar-cane is always cultivated under irrigation. 

 He tried, and succeeded, and told me his cane was fully as 

 good as any grown in the neighbourhood, and had cost him 

 very much less to produce. This is on stiff soil totally different 

 to the light soils before mentioned. The zemindar further 

 said that he intended to keep to the system of deep cultiva- 

 tion instead of irrigation for sugar-cane, and his neighbours 

 also were going to adopt it, as being more profitable. He 

 paid under Ir. 8a. (less than three shillings) per acre for having 

 his land dug eight inches deep. 



I was told in April last, on my way to England on a Penin- 

 sular and Oriental steamer, by an officer of high standing in 

 the Bengal Civil Service, who had been employed a good 

 deal in the Dooab, that where heaps of silt had been piled up, 

 taken from the canal in clearing it out, crops of wheat and 

 barley grew on the heaps, without irrigation, so rank that 

 they had to be used as green food for cattle. Here, again, 

 is a proof that soil loosely thrown together will retain suffi- 

 cient moisture by capillary attraction for the use of cereal 

 crops. The gentleman who gave me this information was 

 formerly a very stanch advocate of irrigation, but had some- 

 what moderated his views on the subject. The evidence I 

 shall now bring forward as to the power of retaining moisture 

 possessed by deeply- cultivated soils I take from the supple- 

 ment to Gazette of India of 18th January, 1873. 



EXTRACT from the Annual Administration Report of the Cotton 

 Department of the Bombay Presidency for 1871-72 : 



:( The difference, however, in the quantity of water required 

 for irrigating land ploughed deeply by the English, and lightly 

 by the native plough, is, as mentioned by Mr. Strachan, very 

 remarkable. He says, speaking of the English plough, ( The 



