( 43A ) 



do it, and Government may also initiate it as a means of protection 

 or as ' famine work,' but it cannot be looked upon as remunerative. 

 Much, however, may be done by throwing embankments across the 

 nullahs or channels made by ravine streams, and thus holding up 

 the water and preventing the continual washing away of the sur- 

 face soil." 



3. It has been seen that action in the sense indicated by 

 Dr. Voelcker has for many years past been taken by the cultivators 

 of Bundelkhand in respect of their small holdings. Occasional 

 instances have also occurred where the energy and enterprise of 

 more wealthy individuals have led to the inception of reclamation 

 works on a larger scale. Thus many years ago Captain Chapman, 

 the owner of an estate on the banks .of the Ganges through which 

 ran a moderately high cliff the further bank of the river made a 

 successful attempt to regulate the drainage which was cutting up 

 his fields at the edge of the cliff. By a system of small dams across 

 the ravines, supplemented by terracing, the further erosion of the 

 upland was checked and the letting value of the fields was greatly 

 increased. Again, an assistant of the United Provinces Agricultural 

 department, who had watched certain experiments in ravine recla- 

 mation made by Sir Edward Buck then Director of the depart- 

 ment rented some waste ravine land in the neighbourhood of 

 Cawnpore. and by the erection of bundhs and terraces succeeded in 

 quintupling the value of the estates- Guided by these examples 

 it was not unnatural that the Local Government should turn its 

 attention to the possibility of making similar experiments with the 

 object of inducing landholders and others to extend this form of 

 improvement to their own lands. As early as 1887, on the advice 

 of Mr. Ward, Commissioner of the Jhansi division, the Local 

 Government decided to make an allotment for the experimental 

 reclamation of waste land in that division by the construction of 

 bundhs across the ravines to hold back the drainage water. Similar 

 experiments are still being continued by the Agricultural depart- 

 ment of this province. But all these experiments have been some- 

 what intermittent in their nature and have been made without any 

 reference to a defined policy of reclamation. 



4. For an instance of organized effort to solve the problems of 

 erosion it is necessary to go to Italy and to study wh^t has been 

 accomplished in that country under the name of bonificazione. In 

 Italy the work of bonificazione has taken two main forms. Firstly 

 and mainly for the improvement of hygienio conditions and the fer- 

 tility of the soil in lowlying areas, and secondly for the prevention 

 of erosion and the filling up of ravines already formed in hilly tracts. 

 The first of these two branches of activity has been undertaken in 



