140 IRRIGATION IN UPPER INDIA. 
actually taken into account in settling the arrangement for lifting 
the water. As ageneral rule, where the supply has not to be lifted 
more than 5 feet,baling is resorted to ; but beyond this, for small, 
edium, and great depths, the balance beam, the leather bag, and 
the Persian wheel respectively are used. 
e cost of well irrigation is very difficult to estimate. It is 
generally arrived at in statistics by reckoning at current rates the 
time of the men and bullocks employed. As a matter of fact, this 
not represent the actual cost to the great proportion of the 
able in their households. The cost of irrigating by any of the 
three methods last mentioned is, on an average, about three times 
greater than the rates charged by Government for irrigation from 
the canals. Tank or reservoir irrigation is comparatively little 
e country 
practised in the Bengal Presidency, on acc t a 
being particularly suitable for irrigation from canals. Wa 
from jheels or swamps is, however, utilized for irrigation wherever 
available, baling being generally resorted to for raising it to such a 
height as will command the land adjoining. It is sometimes 
It is chiefly with canal irrigation that this paper is intended to 
deal. Any account of such irrigation would be incomplete w! 
deltas or doabs, or rather two great series of doabs, the one series 
extending from west to east along the courses of the Ganges ® 
its tributaries, and the other extending from north to south in the 
and Indus and their tributaries, after leaving the hills, are very 
similar in their Seneral characteristics. The country t ugh 
which they flow 38, to all appearance, a perfectly flat plain, od 
the ce of which is generally from 30 to 60 fect above vii — 
ver, _1n every case there is a strip of low-lying land on © 
or both sides -< the river, a large leeeiidee of this land being 
dation. i 
courses are more or less altered in every monsoon. 
