ON THE DECENT PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE IN INDIA. 535 



Sii'liind Canal was under construction years before that famine in southern 

 India which led to the appointment of the Commission. Still the recom- 

 mendations of the Commission coincided with conclusions locally well 

 known and already in process of practical acceptance. I append a state- 

 ment (Statement C) of the perennial canals in the Punjab constructed and 

 under construction. I have to add that for the space between the Indus 

 and the combined Jhelum and Chenab there were projects not yet sanc- 

 tioned, so far as I know, when I left India ; while, further north, between 

 these two rivers, the Jhelum Canal, already sanctioned, had been begun: 

 this work, for reasons on which I need not enter here, had been tempo- 

 rarily discontinued. All the other Doabs, or spaces between the rivers, 

 are accounted for in the appended statement. 



In addition to these perennial canals there are, both in the Punjab 

 and in Sindh, very numerous inundation canals. These are cuts of 

 simple construction filled by the flood waters of the Sutlej, Chenab, 

 and Indus, as the rivers rise in the late summer and autumn. Some of 

 these, notably the MuzafFargarh canals, have been greatly improved of 

 late years, and new ones, such as the Sohag and Para and Sidhnai, have 

 been constructed. Here we have been able to induce cultivators from 

 crowded districts to settle on virgin soil, and the success of the measures 

 taken has been very great. The system of tenure and allotments which 

 has given this result was devised by the late Colonel Wace and put into 

 execution by Lieut.-Colonel Hutchinson. I believe it to possess great 

 importance as a precedent, not only with reference to the spread of irriga- 

 tion to other waste lands in the Punjab, but also with reference to other 

 parts of India where the cultivating settlement of immigrants may be 

 contemplated as a possibility. The area irrigated by inundation canals 

 in Sindh is, I believe, about 1,800,000 acres. In the Punjab it was some 

 930,000 acres at the date of the report of the Famine Commission, and is 

 by the latest returns 1,242,000 acres. 



Of the 27i million acres shown as irrigated nearly 10 million acres 

 are irrigated by wells. It is in the alluvial soil of upper India that a 

 water-bearing stratum is found from 10 to 40 feet below the surface, and 

 the irrigation of crops by means of wells is commonly seen along the 

 courses of the rivers of the Indus and Ganges systems. In the uplands 

 of the spaces between the Punjab rivers the depth of the water-table from 

 the surface is so great that well-sinking becomes an unprofitable venture. 

 In the Central Provinces, Berar, the Bombay Deccan and parts of Madras 

 the subsoil is often rocky and the use of wells is much restricted. I have 

 prepared a return (Statement D) showing the area irrigated by wells in 

 Madras, the North- Western Provinces and Oudh, and the Punjab, with 

 the totals including other provinces, for the five years ending with 

 1889-90. This shows a steady and general improvement, the area having 

 risen in every province almost year by year, and having increased on the 

 whole from some 8,750,000 acres in 1885-6 to nearly 10 million acres in 

 1889-90. An increase of 1;^ million acres of cultivation from wells is 

 valuable, not only because this additional area is thus secured from famine, 

 and enabled to produce better and more valuable crops, but because these 

 improvements are made by private persons at their own cost, and are thus 

 evidence of enterprise and security of tenure. 



Before I leave the returns showing the extension of cultivation there 

 are two further remarks I wish to make ; which I owe partly to Mr. 

 O'Conor's ' Review of the Trade of India for 1888-9 ' and partly to a 



