317 
even Le substances well worthy of cultivation. It is, in uie Kind 
to mention many such examples of possibie revenue from ‘useles 
of country, or of wild products which, if experimentally grown, "might 
in a few years rank among the recognised and valued n of wealth 
to the country. As matters stand, the physical conditions of large 
tracts of India are such as to warrant but slight depa enivei from the 
i i ting 
the native systems of iculture as superior to those of Europe, and 
who would have us believe that improvement is impossible and 
undesirable. In relation to existing conditions the native systems are 
d but j attain 
i mira 
perfection. But there are few aspects of Indian agriculture in which 
improvement is not only possible, but in which it is not, as a matter of 
g place. Witness, for example, the startling revelation 
obtained from a study of the present crops of our fields and gardens. 
Some 50 or 60 of our most generally grown plants came to us, within 
historie times almost, from other parts of Asia or from Africa and 
Europe. f this nature may be mentioned the onion, leek, rape-seed, 
cabbage, cauliflower, turnip, pomelo, water-melon, coffee, loquat, s soy- 
bean, ‘ochro, lettuce, flax, litchi, poppy, field-pea, apricot, plum, peach, 
apple, betel-pepper, chena, and Italian millet, &c., &c. So again 
within still more recent times America has furnished India with many 
cultivated plants, such as the American aloe, pine-apple, custard-apple, 
earth-nut, annatto, capsicum and chilies, papaya, cinchona, pumpkin, 
sweet potato, tomato, arrow-root, tobacco, beer -pear, guava, Cape- 
gooseberry, potato, Indian-corn, &e., &c. Turning from our fields and 
to the nues a j 
within historic times. But were we to eliminate only the plants named, 
reg with the systems of agriculture and horticulture necessitated 
by these, how much would remain that could be called ancient? There 
is hardly a district in which the majority of the crops grown are not 
exotics. Hence it would be as unsafe to assume that everything the 
Indian agriculturist deals with had descended to him from a remote 
antiquity as it would be to believe that his present religious and social 
observances had been derived exclusively from the Vedas. Rather than 
l i i o 
believe that her greatest weakness lies in an inherent tendency to 
appropriate the wl of foreign agricultural skill, instead of perfecting 
and evolving her indigenous resources. Were the origin of the culti- 
vated plants of the world to be expressed to whe he aes would si oa 
to rank very far down in the scale. She has borrowed far more than 
as given, and it would seem, therefore, that t the biberent of 
the future should lie as much as possible i in the path of natural selection 
and se of indigenous materials and systems. That improvement 
culture in these directions is possible and desirable is a 
point on which it would appear there cannot be two opinions. 
POSSIBILITIES OF DEVELOPMENT. 
The — of development on.new lines are then discussed 
under the foll g heads :— 
a) penc we improvement of the supply and vm y of eii 
products; and (b) the introduction of mew products two 
"e 
