THEORIES CONCERNING SOIL FERTILITY 333 



of the Bureau of Statistics, United States Department of Agri- 

 culture: 



"It may be claimed that this extremely low average yield in European Russia 

 is caused by the total failure of crops in famine years, and that these should 

 have been omitted in calculating the average for a series of years. But the 

 extreme variability of the average yield is no less a characteristic feature of Rus- 

 sian agriculture than its very low yield; and the famine years have been so 

 frequent as to become a permanent feature of Russian agriculture, each one of 

 the five-year periods including at least one famine year, and some even two." 



It may be added that in famine years the average yield of wheat 

 in Russia is 6^ bushels, the lowest recorded average yield being 

 5^ bushels per acre. 



In India the average yield of cotton on the " black cotton soils " 

 is less than 100 pounds of lint per acre. The following extract from 

 an article written by Saint Nihal Singh of India (see Wallaces' 

 Farmer, April 30, 1909) is given as a faithful description of the 

 present condition of our cousins in India, the Eastern Branch of 

 our own Aryan 1 race, " the sons of Japheth ": 



"If the American farmer were to seek contrast to his life and labor, he 

 would find it on the farm in India ; and the contrast would be as clearly defined 

 as that which exists between day and night." 



"Almost all the farm land has to be irrigated. While the rainfall is heavy at 

 seasons, it is uncertain, and prolonged drouths make irrigation positively neces- 

 sary." (In the main the water for irrigation is collected in ponds or large shal- 

 low wells during the rainy season, and then drawn to the fields by oxen or carried 

 by hand as needed. When the monsoons fail and the wells or reservoirs are not 

 filled, at least partial crop failure results, and famine is likely to follow. 

 C. G. H.) 



" The farm in India is very small in area. It is very rarely larger than ten 

 or twenty acres often it is only two or three acres. 



1 " The languages of all these branches or groups of people are akin ; that is to 

 say, they are descendant of one original tongue, once spoken in a limited locality, 

 by a single community, but where or when it is impossible to say. 



"Many words still live in India and England that have witnessed the first 

 separation of the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be 

 shaken by any cross examination. The terms for God, for house, for father, mother, 

 son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears, for axe and tree, identical in 

 all the Indo-European idioms, are like the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge 

 the seeming stranger; and whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a Ger- 

 man, or an Indian, we recognize him as one of ourselves. There was a time when 

 the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks and Italians, 

 the Persians and Hindus, were living together beneath the same roof, separate from 

 the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races. " MAX MULLER. 



