THE QUARTERLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
OCTOBER, 1878. 
I. FAMINES IN INDIA. 
By Fred. Chas. Danvers. 
EW, if any, countries of the world have escaped the 
V E scourge of famine at one time or another of the 
period of their national existence. The earliest ca- 
lamities of this kind, of which any records exist, occurred 
in Palestine and the surrounding countries, in the days of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; but little is known of the 
numbers and extent of the famines that occurred in the 
world before the commencement of the Christian era, those 
historians who have recorded such events being few and 
far between, and the information they have furnished con- 
cerning them is but scanty. It is not intended, on the 
present occasion, to attempt to trace the famines of the 
world, so far as the materials for that purpose might be 
available, but to confine our observations and remarks to 
those that have, in times past, desolated our Empire in the 
East. Famines in Europe are not now of such frequent 
occurrence as in bygone centuries, — indeed they may be 
said to have altogether ceased ; but in India they appear to 
occur more frequently than of old, and in greater severity 
than formerly. In making this remark, however, it 
must be observed that there is no sure evidence that 
such is the case absolutely, but there certainly is tolerably 
reliable proof that — in the East Indies, at least — they have 
increased in severity within the last hundred years ; but 
previously to 1770 the records of Indian famines are scanty, 
and probably not wholly reliable as to details. A more im- 
portant question for consideration than the mere frequency 
of famines is, however, the cause of famines, and, conse- 
quent upon that, the best means to be employed for meeting 
VOL. viii. (n.s.) 2 F 
