ORYZA SATIVA. 



17 



up before the advent of the rains induces germination. The method is a very risky one, 

 since, if the seedlings come up before the rains commence, they are speedily dried up 

 and the crop ruined. The principal object in early sowing is to be able to harvest early, 

 and get the rice crop off the ground in time to be followed by one in the rabi, and by 

 having the seed in the ground by the time the rains commence, the first fall is utilized 

 in bringing up the young plants instead of in merely preparing the ground for 

 ploughing. 



Nearly the whole of the transplanted (or jarJian) rice is sown in seed-beds at the 

 beginning of the rains, planted out after a fortnight or three weeks, and cut in aghan or 

 November, whence it is also called aghani. A very small proportion, however, called 

 horon, jethi, or hot weather rice, is sown in January, planted out in February, and cut in 

 May. This is only practised in slimy soil, along the edges of tanks or beds of rivers, 

 which are planted with rice as the water becomes shallow from evaporation. Great 

 labour of an especially disagreeable kind is required, and this method of cultivation is 

 therefore chiefly confined to the fisher and boatmen castes. The area under boroji rice 

 in 1880-81 in the 30 temporarily settled Districts of the N.-W. Provinces was only 

 returned as a little over 5,000 acres. 



No particular rotation is followed ; in damp localities it often alternates with sugar- 

 cane, and in the western Districts of the Provinces with gram, barley or peas. But it is 

 commonly grown year after year in the same land and, moreover, when broad-casted and 

 cut early, is generally followed by a crop in the succeeding rabi, and the land is thus 

 drained by two crops within the year. 



Mixtures. Eice is almost always sown alone, the peculiar conditions of its cultivation not suit- 



ing any other crop. Occasionally the greater millet (juar) is sown mixed with it, but more 

 as an insurance against an over-light rainfall than in the hope of gathering a double crop. 



Soils and manure. The suitable soil is stiff clay which commonly forms the bed of the drainage depres- 



sions and basins, in which rice cultivation most frequently occurs. Rice can even be 

 grown on usar or saline clay, provided that an ample supply of water be given, and 

 evaporation from the soil be checked by never allowing the surface to become dry. Manure 

 appears to be very little used for broad-casted rice. The nurseries in which transplanted 

 rice is raised are generally heavily manured, but the application of manure to the fields 

 in which the seedlings are transplanted is only reported from the Districts of the Benares 

 Division in the Gogra-Granges Doab, where cattle are said to be herded on rice fields, and 

 earth impregnated with saltpetre is occasionally used as a top dressing. 



Tillage. A great portion of the rice land in the Sub-Himalayan Districts is prepared by 



being dug over by the mattock during the cold and hot weather months, when the soil has 

 been softened by a fall of rain. Labour is cheap in these Districts, and practice has 

 produced dexterity, and in consequence an acre can be dug in this manner to a depth of 

 six inches for about Es. 2-8, while at the contract rates allowed in Doab Districts it 

 would cost at least Es. 8 or Es. 10. For land not dug in this way, the number of plough- 

 ings varies according as the crop is to be sown broad-cast or planted out, being two or 

 three in the first case, and from four to six in the second. The soil is pulverized and 

 weeds collected by a rough harrow made by fixing a row of pegs in the ordinary log 

 clod crusher. If the land lie at all saline the harrow is not used, since by rendering the 



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