INTRODUCTION. 



V 



rice, cotton, &c.) are all of a tropical or sub-tropical character. The rabi season on the other hand, 

 with an average temperature but little in excess of that of the English summer months, is well suited 

 for the production of the most characteristic crops of temperate latitudes, wheat and barley under 

 good cultivation yielding a produce which is fully equal in quality and quantity to that obtained 

 in England or America. 



Both kharif and rabi may be divided into two sub-seasons. The native agricultural year com- 

 mences with the first of the month of Kudr, (a date which varies on the solar calendar, but which 

 corresponds on an average with the middle of September,) from which the sowings of the early rabi 

 commence. These include mostly garden crops, such as ldhi*( Brassica glauca ), rdmddna (Amaranthus 

 frutescens), carrots and vegetables of European origin (cabbages, broccoli, turnips, &c.), which ripen 

 in January and February, two months before the regular rabi harvest commences. The sowing of 

 the more important rabi crops, including all the cold weather cereals, commences in the middle of 

 October, and continues till the middle of November, and although there is as a rule little or no rain 

 after the end of September, yet the ground generally retains sufficient moisture to ensure the proper 

 germination of the seed. The date of harvesting these crops vary a good deal in different parts of 

 the Provinces, but in most districts they are all off the field by the middle of April. 



The months of April, May and June constitute a sub-season, termed by natives zdid or " extra," 

 but which may be more conveniently treated as a portion of the kharif. The principal crops pro- 

 duced in these months are of the melon tribe, grown in manured pits on sand banks in the bed of 

 a river, and the small millet known as cliehna (^Panicum miliaceum), which requires copious irrigation. 

 These ripen in June. At the end of May or beginning of June indigo and maize are sown where 

 irrigation is available, since both these crops should be got into the ground if possible at least three 

 weeks before the rains commence — indigo, because excessive moisture is apt to damp off the young 

 plants, and maize, because it is as a rule followed by a rabi crop, and it is therefore a great object to 

 get it off" the ground as soon as possible. Ploughing commences actively with the setting in of the 

 rains at the end of June or beginning of July, the first crop to be sown being cotton, then rice, and 

 the greater millet (judr), and last of all the spiked millet (hdjra). It is of the utmost importance 

 that all the land destined for rabi crops should be ploughed up at the beginning of the rains, so as to 

 catch the rain in open furrow, and since the whole of the rabi should be ploughed and reploughed at 

 least four times during July and August, the cultivator finds no lack of employment in the intervals 

 between the weedings of his kharif crops. 



Sugar-cane is somewhat exceptional in its season, being sown from January to April, and cut 

 during the following cold season. It is most properly reckoned as a kharif crop. 



The soils over the greater portion of the Provinces being of alluvial origin, do not exhibit any 

 such striking differences as are seen in a tract where they have been formed by the disintegration of 

 rock in situ. The fluvial action to which most of the soils of the Provinces owe their origin, must 

 have effected the more or less complete intermiKture of the results of the denudation from which they 

 are derived, and the main difference between one soil and another lies more in mechanical condition 

 than iu chemical composition. Local differences in the strength of the river current would result 

 in the separation of the finer from the coarser particles of earth held in suspension, the latter sinking 

 much slower than the former, and being therefore deposited in greatest quantity where the current 

 was slowest — in still water channels and back waters. Differences in the size of particles are often 

 associated with differences in chemical composition, and to some extent this process would, therefore, 

 tend to the separate deposition of the particles of different kinds of substances, such as for instance 



* In many Sub-Himalayan tracts Wii is an important field crop, — W. C. B. 



