50 
Indian Agriculture in its Physical Aspects. 
may in some cases have to Le given artificially ; others again, 
such as the pulse crops, gram (Gicer arietinimi) or arhar (Gajanm 
indicus), can, when once germinated, do without dependence on 
water, and are suited to a hot, diy climate. The indigo plant, 
again, is favoured in the development of leaf (the portion used 
for making the well-known d3'e) by the damp climate of Beliar 
and Bengal ; but the production of the seed goes on much better 
in the drier climate of the Punjab and the North- West Provinces ; 
and so it is that the two cultivations are carried on in quite 
distinct parts of the country. 
As I travelled about I had ample opportunities of studjdng 
the various changes in agricultural practice. To take a single 
province — the most northern one, the Punjab — we may have, even 
here in the plains, variations from the seven inches of annual 
rainfall in Multan to twenty-six inches at Amritsar, and thirty- 
five inches at Hoshiarpur ; and, when one reaches the hills, as at 
Simla, the rainfall increases to seventy inches and more yearly. 
In the first-named case canals are absolute essentials to guarding 
against famine ; in Hoshiai-pur, on the contraiy, the water-level 
is quite near the surface, and irrigation by wells is practicable 
everywhere. In the Bombay Presidency we may go to places 
like Baroda or Neriad, or to Igatpuri (where the rainfall is from 
100 to 170 inches annually), and will find rice growing without 
any ii'rigation ; grass headlands and live hedges too may be seen. 
But as we pass inland to the Kliandesh district the rainfall sinks 
to thirty inches, and rice is replaced by cotton, millets and 
wheat, while neither grass nor hedges will gi-ow. South of 
Bombay, in the Kistna valley, the rainfall is forty inches, at 
Belgaum sixty-five inches, and at Londa, a comparatively small 
distance off, as much as 150 inches yearly. The cultivation alters 
with each set of conditions. Idiarif crops being distinctive features 
of one part and raid crops of another. Going into Eastern Bengal 
during the rains one sees the countrj' in great measure inundated, 
the crops of rice and jute growing, as it were, out of the water 
itself, whereas, after the floods have subsided, the inundated land 
and the beds of rivers and streams are the cultivating areas for 
mustard and cereal crops. 
Nor is the influence of varying climate seen alone in the 
crops, but it is marked in the cattle and even in the people 
themselves. On the dry plains of the Punjab especially, and 
also in the North-West Provinces, the bullocks are fine, large 
and strong ; but when we come to the damper regions of Bengal 
they are found to be diminutive and miserable looking. 
Buffaloes, however, rejoice in a wet or damp climate, and they 
flourish in many parts of Beugal and aloug the Western Ghats, 
