REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 



523 



Projects for navigation by canals and for extension of irrigation works 

 are also entertained as factors in the Cheapening of wheat at the sea- 

 board ; for the movement of Indian wheat to Liverpool, as well as the 

 shipment of Dakota wheat to the same mart, depe rids upon price. The 

 country that will produce it for the least money will have the trade of 

 Liverpool, and the internal improvements of India, projected and fos- 

 tered in Great Britain, are so many levers employed to depress the 

 prices of wheat throughout the world. 



An official estimate of the average rate of yield per acre of irrigated 

 land in the Northwest Provinces and Oudh is 20£ buhsels, where on 

 lands not irrigated it is 13J bushels. About two- fifths of the wheat 

 area of these provinces is irrigated. The population of this region is 

 over four hundred to the square mile, while the holdings range from 

 an average of 3 to an average of acres. The Central Provinces 

 farm 8 are much larger, the land is rich, and manure and irrigation not 

 much used. 



Mr. J; B. Fuller, assistant director of agriculture of the Northwest 

 Provinces and Oudh, thus reports the mode of cultivation and harvest- 

 ing, commencing with a description of the plow : 



In its idea it may be considered a pickaxe, drawn by bullocks, the handle being the 

 plow-beam, one arm of the pick the plowshare, and the other arm the handle or stilt. 

 It, therefore, tears and does not cnt the ground, and, weight for weight and depth for 

 depth, is infinitely heavier to draw than the modern plows of Europe or America. It 

 is, in fact, a grubber, not a plow, and merely stirs the earth without inverting it. 



The plow is at its worst, as regards the Northwest Provinces and Oudh, in the rice 

 districts of Oudh and the Benares division, where it is of ludicrously small size, often 

 only weighing 17 or 18 pounds. * * » Speaking generally, the efficiency of the 

 plow may be said to increase as we go westward, the ordinary plow of the Central 

 Doab weighing about 28 pounds, while that of the Western Districts weighs nearly 50 

 pounds, is bound with iron round the ed^es of the sole, and, instead of a short spike 

 for a share, has a long iron bar which projects behind and can be thrust forward from 

 time to time as its point wears down. 



In the drier districts of the AgTa and Allahabad divisions and Bundelkhand wheat 



* * * is generally sown with either barley or gram, which by their superior hard- 

 iness continue to eke out a crop in cases where the wheat would fail from insufficient 

 moisture. Wheat is * * * sown in the end of October or beginning of November, 

 and cut in March and April. As a rule it is only sown on land which has lain fallow 

 during the preceding kharif [summer], but in highly manured land near village sites 

 it occasionally follows maize, the maize being cut only six or eight weeks at the 

 most before the wheat is sown. * * * 



Wheat is grown on almost every soil but the very lightest sand, a rather heavy 

 loam being considered best suited to it. The fields of loamy soil, which cover a 

 large part of the Doab, * * * bear, with careful cultivation, crops of wheat of 

 surprising excellence, although unmanured for years. But manure is as a rule applied 

 to the better class of wheat fields generally in every second or third year, although 

 in quantities which would sound ridiculously small to the English fanner, 4 tons [to 

 the acre] being about the average. It is reported from some districts of the prov- 

 inces that land is occasionally prepared for wheat by herding sheep or cattle on it, 

 but this is a practice of very far from general occurrence. 



Twenty plowings are not uncommon in Gorakhpur, while two or three are held suf- 

 ficient in the black soil of Bundelkhand. Eight plowings may be taken as the aver- 

 age number. 



The clods are crushed and a fine tilth (which is absolutely essential in most soils) 

 created by dragging a flat log of wood across the field, the bullock driver standing 

 on it to increase its weight. 



If the ground is very damp, the seed is sometimes sown broadcast and plowed in, 



* * * but the two commonest methods of sowing are (1) by simply following the 

 plow and dropping the seed into the furrow made by it, * * * and (2) by drop- 

 ping the seed down a bamboo tube fastened to the plow stilt [the former beiug the 

 practice in some localities and the latter in others]. 



The amount of seed used per acre varies from 100 to 140 pounds. After the sowing 

 is completed, the field is either left in furrow or is smoothed with the clod-crusher, 

 the latter process being said to save irrigation by enabling the water to spread quicker 

 over the surface. The field is then divided off into irrigation beds by scraping up 

 little banks of earth with a wooden shovel. 



If the soil is sufficiently moist in October, * • * the necessity of irrigation 



