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severe famine raged in India, in which people were reduced 

 to such extremity that many kept themselves alive by devour- 

 ing human flesh. In 1615-10 a similar famine occurred followed 

 by plague which lasted several years. It is also known from 

 authentic history that severe famines raged in the reigns of 

 Shah Jehan and Aurangzeb. In the famine of 1770, in nine 

 months ten million people died in Bengal. The famine of 1784 

 was of such bad type that four seers of wheat were sold for a 

 rupee, and the deaths from starvation were innumerable. The 

 most recent of all famines, viz., that prevailing in some part of 

 India or other from 1897 to 1900, has been severer than the 

 famine of 1874-78 but neither of these two famines which are 

 within our living memory can be compared in destructive- 

 ness of human life to the famines which prevailed more 

 than ioo years ago. 



1,439. On the other hand, it must not be supposed, that 

 because more land has been under cultivation now than ever 

 there was in former times, that because, on the whole, there 

 has been steady progress in the export of food stuffs from 

 India, that because India has had no occasion yet to look to 

 foreign countries for means of livelihood, that because the 

 agricultural population have been generally better off now than 

 they ever were before, that therefore there is nothing to fear 

 from the steady increase of population and the necessary limit 

 there is to extension of cultivation. Already the extension of 

 cultivation has gone on to such an extent in the populous 

 localities, that there is not sufficient pasture-land left for the 

 cattle. Barring occasional famines, no actual stress is felt 

 yet regarding the food supply of the country. But in another 

 20 years, unless agricultural improvements keep pace with 

 the increase of population, or plague decimates the popula- 

 tion at a still greater rate than it has been doing, the aspect 

 of affairs may change entirely, and India like England may 

 have to look to foreign sources for food supply, or take to 

 emigration on a more wholesale scale. How India stands at 



