170 C. W. ODLING^ ESQ., M.INST.C.E., C.S.I., ON 



embanked where water is preserved not only for the usual domestic 

 purposes, but to keep alive the crops and preserve them from drought, 

 and the advantageous influence of those must be very large. When 

 one compares the areas that have already been irrigated by these 

 works with the millions of acres that are said yet to be left, I think 

 one should bear in mind that irrigation works are valuable not 

 merely for the actual quantity of crops which they are instrumental 

 in growing, but also that those additional crops afford a margin 

 or reserve for future times of scarcity. 



I quite agree with what Mr. Buckley said— in fact, it is a common- 

 place now I think — that so far as we know there was never yet a 

 time when there was not food enough in India to actually feed the 

 people ; but the difficulty has been that of communication or trans- 

 port. That was the difficulty, as we have heard in Orissa, and the 

 difficulty in the great Behar famine in 1873. In the year 1897-98, 

 the time Mr. Buckley was speaking of just now, we passed through 

 a time of as great scarcity as that of 1873; but everything went 

 comparatively smoothly. Unfortunately, as Mr, Buckley said, the 

 threshing floors were empty and the people thin ; but still, somehow 

 or other, the food got there, the diff'erence being that railways now 

 permeate that country, which in 1873 was not the case. So that 

 what the Government had to do was to find the money. The traders 

 found the means of transport, and the Government was spared the 

 great labour and anxiety of providing the food. That same office 

 was, to some extent, but to a much less extent, of course, performed 

 by the canals and railways. 



The Secretary. — I have to read a note of apology from Sir Colin 

 Scott Moncrief, who was expected to be here this evening and whom 

 we should have welcomed to speak on Mr. Odlmg's paper : " I am very 

 sorry to have to tell you that I cannot come to Mr. Odling's lecture 

 to-morrow. I had fully counted on doing so ; but an intimate friend 

 has suddenly died and I must attend her funeral to-morrow at 

 Hitchin at 3 o'clock." 



On the part of the Council and myself I may express our obliga- 

 tions to Mr. Odling for undertaking to prepare this paper for the 

 Institute. [Applause.] I knew when I asked him to do so that he 

 was just the man to do it well, and I think you will all agree with 

 me that he has fulfilled our highest expectations. 



He has told us, and so have Mr. Buckley and Sir Charles Stevens, 



