INTRODUCTION, 



ix 



thrown each day the ashes from the cooking fire and all refuse vegetable food. No attempt is made, 

 however, to prevent loss by drainage or evaporation, but the droppings of Indian cattle are so 

 poor in nitrogenous matter, that it is probable that the loss from these causes is over-estimated. On 

 the other hand vUlages are not uncommon in which no attempt is made to collect even the manure 

 which is at hand, and the cultivators either from caste prejudice or force of custom will make no 

 endeavour to manure their land. 



The fields of an Indian village have, however, a source of manure peculiar to the country. An 

 invincible objection is held by the villagers to anything in the form of a fixed privy, and the land im- 

 mediately surrounding the village site is the favourite retiring place for its inhabitants. The value 

 of this custom to the soil can hardly be over-estimated. It is mainly owing to it that each village 

 is surrounded with a belt of rich land, several fields deep, which pays at least double the rent yielded 

 by land at a short distance beyond it. Indeed the fields of a village may be nearly always marked 

 off into three belts by differences in their manure supply. The one lying round the outside, called 

 the harha or j^a/w, is never manured, the one next to it (the manjha) is manured in every second or 

 third year from the cultivator's muck heap, while the one immediately surrounding the village (the 

 gaulidn or hdrd) is fertilized in the manner indicated above in addition to this. 



It will not be out of place here to make brief mention of the systematic manner in which the refuse 

 of certain towns is utilized by the cultivators who live round them. The city of Farukhabad is surround- 

 ed by a broad band of what is probably the highest cultivation in the Provinces. Three crops are gather- 

 ed within the year : potatoes occupy the ground from October and February, are succeeded by tobacco, 

 and the tobacco by maize, which is off the ground in time for the next crop of potatoes. Enquiries made 

 by Mr. Buck in 1872, showed that this productiveness was entirely due to the use of the city refuse as 

 poudrette, and that a regular system had organized itself for the transmission of the manure from the 

 city to the cultivators. The city was divided into wards, each one of which was in charge of a set of 

 scavengers or sweepers, whose sole remuneration for the daily removal of refuse and filth was the price 

 which they could obtain from the cultivators for it.* It was calculated that the total annual price paid 

 to the scavengers for the manure was about Rs. 20,000, while the increase in rental, which Avas due to its 

 application, amounted to some Rs. 40,000 more. But this state of things is very exceptional, and is 

 mainly due to the fact that the cultivators round Farukhabad are of a caste which permits of their using 

 as manure refuse which in most cities is disposed of as fuel for brick burning. 



The occasional use of earth containing nitrate of potash (saltpetre), especially for tobacco, has 

 been already noticed, as has also the manurial benefit which results from the use of water impreg- 

 nated with nitrate of soda {khdri). In some places there appears to be a dim recognition of the 

 advantages which result from ploughing in a leguminous crop, although it is hardly ever acted upon, 

 probably because the advantage in present of cutting and carrying the crop outweigh the profit in 

 future from using it as manure. No use is made of crushed bones, and careful experiments have 

 shown that the increase in produce which they occasion is on many soils very small, if not altogether 

 problematical. In indigo refuse, however, there is a most valuable fertilizer, which in these Provinces 

 hardly ever finds its way on to the land being, as a rule, sold by the factory as fuel for glass making, 

 when it fetches as much as Rs. 1-8 to Rs. 2 per 100 (dry) maunds. In Behar it is universally used 

 as a manure, partly perhaps because the factories there have more land directly attached to them than 

 is the case in these Provinces, and partly because no glass is made there, and the temptation to turn 

 it into ready money does not exist. 



The condemnation which is passed on the Indian method of tillage is, as a rule, far too sweeping. 



The same arrangement exists in Lucknow.— W. C B. 



3 



