On the Conditions of Wheat-Ch'owing in India. 23 
like gram und ddl, often grown with wheat as mixed crops, 
being generally sown in lines or around the borders of the fields. 
It will be observed, however, that they ripen before the wheat, 
and are accordingly separately reaped. Adulteration of oil-seeds 
with wheat must result from gross carelessness or malpractices. 
Cotton is, perhaps (in the districts in which it is cultivated to 
any extent), the centre round which the cultivator's ideas of 
profit and successful husbandry gravitate. It must follow 
wheat or other rahi crops — the soil getting only a brief rest, 
during which time it has to be rapidly ploughed. The cotton 
continues on the field thi'ough the Icliarif season until it is 
generally too late to follow with a rahi crop. 
The illustrations we have used apply more or less to all the 
four provinces shown in the table of crops and seasons. The 
climatic and other peculiarities of each of these provinces are 
indicated by the varying periods of sowing and reaping. The 
skill of the cultivator is in each province displayed by the 
manner in which he can fit together his seasonal crops ; but he 
has many to choose from, and need have no difficulty, if desired, 
in throwing on the field a grain that will give a return in sixty 
days. A well-known rice in Bengal receives the name of the 
" Sixty-days Rice " from that fact. We are not dealing with 
Bengal at the present moment, but it may be said in passing 
that the remarkable manner in which the crops grown in India 
are adapted to climate and soil is nowhere better shown than in 
the immense numbers of forms of rice, each directly adapted to 
the peculiar climate and the soil in which it is grown. There 
are rices that can be cultivated on comparatively dry soils, rices 
that occupy the ground for more than half the year, rices that 
grow in the cold temperate climates, and rices that can thrive 
only in tropical swamps. Again, of this last-mentioned class, 
there are some varieties that cannot survive an inundation of 
more than two to five feet of water, while there are others that 
will continue to grow even when submerged under a depth of 
from ten to fifteen feet of water. 
This adaptability to special necessities is the great fact 
by which would-be reformers of Indian agriculture find their 
theories discomfited. No imported wheat-seed has yet been 
found that was of the least use to India. The season is too 
short for its maturing ; and, moreover, there is another pecu- 
liarity of Indian wheat-cultivation that has not been fully appre- 
ciated. Although our wheats are winter wheats, in the sense 
that they are sown in autumn and reaped in spring (except iu 
the case of the wheats grown on the hills), they do not lie for 
months under snow, nor are, in fact, even subjected to severe 
frost. No sooner have the first twenty to thirty days of spring 
