288 
the lower country bey ond, it loses its velocity very fast, and therefore 
drops all its silt in the “ba nk,” ie, near the river it has left. If this 
may be a quarter of a mile wide) would not be the highest parts of the 
country. In fact, in pervect rice, the water is pem still and bom 
evidently all or very nearly all rain-water. Where the land i well 
silted, as in the case of large sandbanks, it is ebie to Wis "T 
Botanie Garden, was of opinion that in these rice fields the sm n ative 
power of the soil is sufficient, under the sun and rain of Bengal, to go 
on growing the present crops of rice indefinitely. 
IMPROVEMENT IN Rice CULTURE. 
ot I pope is ee that have been made to teach the Bengalees 
to gro A favourite proposal is to give them an 
English Eg which shall go deeper than the native cultivator and 
bring up fresh soil. I pass by the ‘practical difficulty that in none of 
the terraced fields and in none of the small fields, without a revolution in 
boundaries and customs, could such a plough be used, The plough is 
the most perfect i mplement yet devised for setting in cree ping grasses, 
g ns and sees a pat 
couch grass in the fallow he misses that patch with the Penis: er = 
some ay aee in early summer he turns in a party of boys to the 
ughly out. — bad (or about-to-quit) farmers wili ‘plough 
a field fail of creeping grass to get a corn crop; they get an gres. 
corn crop and the field is f found Ps pr parlance) to ek * clean 
run out," or (as I should rather put it) to o thoroughly foul that it 
will take two years at — ard a heavy ep * get it straight. Now 
in India we have, not one or two, but many ereeping grasses to eontend 
with ; the safety of the diede cultivator is that he has a hard pan, 
impervious to creeping grasses, which his cultivator travels upon but 
broken. He get i 
water i t. y add that if a Bengal field was ploughed with an 
English d nuns just before dibbing, I doubt whether the rice would get 
a firm enou g 
have no doubt this id be the result. The "En glis à skilled agri- 
eulturist in this ease would have been md to have on land perfeetly 
clean before he commenced on it with his English plou 
] am not at all oe manm a pom in applying the English plough in 
B ee hands in Bengal. ney it w be 
exceedingly difficult to af a Bengali cultivator e clean hi s land 
