472 Mr. W. Jesse on the 
doubtj from a political and economic point of view, but 
disastrous to the sportsman and the naturalist. Even within 
the last six years I have watched many of my favourite snipe- 
j heels replaced one by one by '^smiling corn-fields/' and, 
doubtless^ as time goes on, the area of arable land will in- 
crease still further. 
'^ There is not much diversity in the soil. The natives 
themselves generally divide it into four kinds — goind, 
domat, matyar, and bhur. Of the area under cultivation 
20 per cent, may be put down as goind (highly manured 
land), 55 as domat (mixed sand and clay), 20 as matyar 
(heavy clay), and 15 as bhur (sand).'^ The country, as a 
whole, is but part of a vast alluvial plain, remarkable for the 
absence of stone. Kunker, an impure calcareous concretion, 
very hard and of considerable value as road-metal, occurs 
in layers and patches, rarely at any great depth, and 
often appears at the surface iu the vicinity of nullahs and 
jheels. In sinking the wells of the bridge over the Ganges 
at Cawnpore, however, kunker was met with at a depth of 
60 feet. Forming, as the district does, part of the " Garden 
of India,^^ the soil is very fertile, the principal crops being 
wheat, barley, millet, Indian corn, gram, sugar-cane, pulse, 
and oil-seeds. Rice is grown along the edges of rivers, 
jheels, and in other suitable localities ; the tobacco-plant is 
reared near Lucknow, while the cultivation of opium employs 
a large number of people, and brings in a considerable revenue 
to the Government. 
The climate, on the whole, is healthy. In the neighbour- 
hood of the big rivers, and towards the Terai, malaria is 
prevalent during and after the rains, and Lucknow itself 
has an unpleasant reputation for enteric fever ; but beyond 
that, and an occasional epidemic of cholera, there is nothing 
much to be feared. 
The average rainfall is about 38 inches. During the ten 
years 1870-79 the average was 41'18 inches, and this in 
spite of the two years 1876 and 1877, with rainfalls of 
23"*67 and 11'^'66 respectively. The scantiness of water 
in 1877, according to Mr. Reid, caused a wonderful change 
