96 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF 



rain-water by banking the fields, and deep cultivation, and 

 the use of manures, more particularly green manuring. With 

 these alone the produce of grain-food for man could be 

 raised from about fivefold the amount of seed, which perhaps 

 it now is, to from twenty to fifty or even one hundredfold, which 

 would be amply remunerative. The next object after growing 

 food for the population should be forage crops, or food for 

 cattle, and commercial requirements ; these being introduced 

 and grown in rotation with cereals, would increase the crops of 

 the latter. 



The soil of a great part of Upper India is a deep alluvial 

 deposit, and merely requires the addition of vegetable matter 

 to make it a most fertile loam. With proper cultivation as 

 good crops could be raised in Upper India as in any part of 

 the world, and it is only the backward state of agricultural 

 knowledge that prevents its being one of the chief granaries 

 of the world. 



With the barren, unculturable lands planted with trees, and 

 the unirrigated cultivated lands deeply cultivated, the soil being 

 kept open by judicious manuring, a great improvement in the 

 climate must follow. The temperature of April, May, and June, 

 now the season of the hot winds, would be greatly reduced, 

 and probably the greatest heat we should experience in those 

 months would never exceed 100 Fahr. in the shade, and that 

 only for a couple of hours in the day, while the nights, morn- 

 ings, and evenings would be cool and pleasant. That 100 

 Fahr. would be the .maximum heat in the shade during 

 the hottest season of the year may, I think, be fairly inferred 

 from the study of the climate of other countries, and a con- 

 sideration of the causes which increase or diminish the tem- 

 perature of a country. In Bengal, away from the influence of 

 the action of the sea on temperature, we find it is never neces- 

 sary to keep the glass doors and windows of houses shut to 



