440 Transactions of the Agricultural 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I, Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India. 

 8vo. Vol. I. 1829, Serampore. Vol. II. Part I., 1832, Calcutta. 



There is a well-written prospectus by Mr. W. Carey the missionary, who 

 first suggested the idea of an Agricultural Society of India, and who is now 

 secretary to it. In this the advantages of cooperation, and of joint-stock 

 information and experience, are ably pointed out. The good done by the agri- 

 cultural societies in England is referred to ; and the most beneficial results, 

 as respects the peasantry, the landowners, and the Europeans, who engage in 

 agriculture in India, are anticipated from the institution proposed. To give 

 some idea of the present state of agriculture in India, it is stated that, in many 

 parts of the country, the same crop is invariably raised on the same ground 

 year after year ; hay is never cut till the grass has died or withered where it grew ; 

 scientific rotation of crops is a subject to which Indian cultivators are stran- 

 gers ; and the manure produced by animals is generally consumed for fuel. No 

 attempt to improve live stock appears to have been ever made in India; though 

 there is every reason to believe that all the animals used in the husbandry of 

 Europe are capable of as high a degree of improvement in India as they are 

 in more temperate regions. The quantity of waste lands in India is said to be 

 so large as almost to exceed belief. Extensive tracts on the banks of numerous 

 rivers are annually overflowed, so that the}' produce little except long and 

 coarse grass, seldom turned to any useful account. During the rainy season 

 these tracts are the haunts of wild buffaloes, which in the night come up from 

 them and devour the crops of rice on the high lands. In the cold season, wild 

 hogs, tigers, and other noxious animals, unite with the buffaloes in occupying 

 these extensive tracts of alluvial soil; which, though now so pernicious, might, 

 by embanking and draining, become the richest lands in the country, and 

 contribute greatly to the improvement of the climate. Similar observations 

 might be made respecting immense tracts now wholly covered with wood, and 

 producing nothing whatever to civilised man ; but, on the contrary, proving a 

 nuisance to the surrounding districts, by affording a shelter to noxious animals. 

 The oppression of landowners and petty officers on the cultivator is so great, 

 that in some parts of the country no farmer can reasonably promise himself 

 security for a single night. " Thus," concludes Mr. Carey, " one of the finest 

 countries in the world, comprising almost every variety of climate and situation, 

 diversified by hills and valleys, intersected in every part by streams (most of 

 which are navigable six months in the year, and some of them through the whole 

 year afford every facility for carrying manure to the land and every part of 

 the produce to market), is, as far as respects its agricultural interests, in a 

 state the most abject and degraded." (p. x.) This is a most forbidding picture ; 

 but it is incident to all countries in a particular stage of their progress in 

 civilisation. Time was when the low districts of England were ravaged by 

 the wolves and bears from the mountain forests, and when the crops on the 

 alluvial vales of her rivers were annually swept away, or at least greatly 

 injured, by floods. As to oppression by superiors, and thieving from others, 

 there will always be abundance of such evils, till mankind are brought to 

 something like equalisation in point of knowledge, and consequently power; 

 till, in short, the mass of society becomes fit for self-government. 



Gardening, we are next informed, is in almost as low a state as agriculture. 

 " Except in the gardens of certain Europeans, who at a great expense procure 

 a few articles for the table, there is nothing to be met with besides a few wild 

 herbs, or garden productions of the most inferior kind. All that is seen of 

 orchards amounts to no more than clumps of mango trees crowded together 

 without judgment ; and in which the quality of the fruit is but little consulted. 

 The improvement of fruits is almost neglected, and every thing which can 



