16 On the Coiiditicns of Wheat-Gn'oiuing in India. 
reached, wKich may be said to be demarcated by the Nerbudda, 
the J umna, and the Ganges Rivers. This has a mean altitude 
of between 1,000 and 2,500 feet, with isolated peaks rising to 
6,000 feet above the sea. The influences of this immense table- 
land are very considerable. We shall, while speaking of the 
wheat of the Central Provinces, have occasion to allude to some 
of these ; but, meantime, it may be here stated that through al- 
titude the winter temperate region of India is carried by isolated 
patches of country considerably to the south of the line indi- 
cated, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Mysore possessing a more or 
less temperate winter. 
Lmndation. — Speaking of the two most valuable cereal 
crops of India, we have in the above geographical sketch 
established the regions of their cultivation. The tracts of India 
which have a temperate winter are, or may be thrown, under 
wheat, while the remainder corresponds to the rice area. The 
region of rice-cultivation is also that of greatest rainfall and of 
annual inundation. It would be beside our present purpose to 
branch off at this point into a dissertation on the subject of 
annual inundations, and of the degree of fertilisation thereby 
caused. Suffice it to say that in Lower India the degree to which 
the waters from the rivers are poured over the plains is infinitely 
small as compared with the inundation due solely and simply to 
rainfall. 
The rivers of Lower India are carried within elevated beds 
across the plains, and, practically speaking, may be said to 
neither irrigate nor drain them. These elevated beds have 
sloping banks, perhaps of miles in extent, which the rivers on 
rising unquestionably inundate and fertilise ; but were the main 
stream of any of the rivers to find a passage through its self-con- 
structed channel, it would at once plough for itself a new course, 
and leave its old bed as a serpentine lake. It is needless to 
mention cases in which this has actually occurred. Bridges span 
the dry channels of former I'ivers, and even mighty streams like 
the Brahmaputra have changed their courses. These are, how- 
ever, comparatively rare occm-rences, and, passing across the 
elevated bed annually inundated (which, as stated, may be many 
miles in breath), the level of the plains is ultimately reached — 
a level below that of the rivers. Expanses of the latter nature 
derive their fertility from the rains alone. They become swamps, 
on which no other crop save rice can be cultivated. This is the 
character of the inundation of Bengal as a whole, in which no 
motion in the water of the fields can be traced, either from or 
towards the rivers. Gradually as the rain falls the fields get 
flooded, and the level of the water rises to a depth of two to 
five feet. The crops keep growing apace with this rise of the 
