CULTURE IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF INDIA. 187 
favoured with a small specimen, and from whom we shall have 
further samples as well as information. This being the result 
of a first experiment, on a small scale, is not, perhaps, calcu- 
lated to give a fair idea of what is practicable, particularly as 
we are without any information respecting the mode of culture, 
or the kind or quality of seed which was employed. But 
Mr. M‘Leod, now Commissioner in the Punjab, mentions in 
one of his reports, that the growth is very luxuriant there. 
The Flax is comparatively short, light coloured, and rather dry, 
and more like Egyptian than any other kind of Flax. 
It might be objected to the growth of Flax so far in the 
interior, that land-carriage for so great a distance would be an 
insuperable obstacle. But, as Mr. Williams finds it suit his 
purpose to send his now-famed Jubbulpore Hemp even to 
Calcutta, there seems no reason why Flax should not be equally 
able to bear the expenses of culture and of transit. In this 
direction, there is, moreover, an excellent road, described by 
the Cotton Committee of the Agri-Horticultural Society, 
8th January, 1840. “From Jubbulpore to Mirzapore, on the 
banks of the Ganges, the great cotton-mart of the North-West 
provinces, a bridged and metalled road of 239 miles in length, 
equal to any in England, has been made by Government; at 
all the stations, the means of transport, and on the river, boats 
of every description, abound.” This road is regularly kept up, 
and a toll levied at the base of the ghauts. The native princes 
have, however, without contributing to its expenses, diminished 
its utility by levying extra duties on the goods passing through 
their territories. (v. ‘Journ. Agric. Soc.,’ vol. viii, p. 115.1) There 
is a prospect, however, of these being remodelled. The most 
important consideration, nevertheless, is that of climate. 
According to the concurrent testimony of different observers, as 
reported in the Author’s work, on ‘The Culture and Commerce 
of Cotton in India,’ p. 311, &c., deficiency of moisture is 
seldom complained of; and there will, probably, be seldom any 
excess in the season when the Flax would be cultivated—that 
is, in the cold-weather months. Hence the chief difficulty in 
India will be diminished, if not entirely escaped. 
1 See also a letter by Montague Gore, Esq., to the same effect, in ‘The Times,’ in 
the summer of 1853. 
