446 
Famines in India . 
[October, 
the case ; and instead of improvements in this direction, an 
opinion is prevalent that the land generally is becoming 
exhausted, and consequently less productive than it formerly 
was. One reason for this may probably be that, with an 
increase of population, fresh lands are broken up for culti- 
vation which are generally of only inferior quality, and, 
with the existing rude state of agriculture, often yield barely 
sufficient to do more than cover the cost incurred ; whilst, 
with regard to the better soils, the exhausting nature of the 
tillage is gradually lessening their productive powers. The 
use of manure is practised in India to a very limited extent, 
dry crops being generally left entirely without it, and it 
necessarily follows that the plant food in the soil must be 
gradually becoming less and less, where everything is taken 
from it and nothing returned. When a field becomes 
barren it is thrown out of cultivation and left fallow for two 
or three years, when the previous system of exhaustive cul- 
tivation is again repeated as long as the land will produce 
sufficient to pay for seed and labour. The general scarcity 
of manure in India is, in a great measure, attributable to 
the want of fire-wood, in consequence of which the dung of 
cattle is used as fuel, instead of being ploughed into the 
land as manure. The use of manure, especially in a hot 
and dry country, is not limited to its value as a means of 
plant food, when it contains organic matter. Mineral 
manures are, no doubt, limited in their value to this pur- 
pose ; but it has been ascertained, by careful experiment, 
that the addition of organic matter to the soil not only 
increases its power of absorbing moisture from the atmo- 
sphere, but -makes it more retentive of moisture when once 
absorbed, and therefore less liable to be desiccated by dry 
winds and solar heat. 
Next after manure, improved ploughing presents a means 
of greatly benefitting the crops and the fertile properties of 
the soil. By breaking up the land to a greater depth than 
is now done, an unexhausted soil will often be disturbed, 
possessing greater elements of fertility than the worn-out 
upper stratum on which crops have been grown, perhaps 
continuously, for hundreds of years past. Besides this, by 
deepening the loosened surface, the land is rendered more 
capable of absorbing rainfall, and permitting it to penetrate 
to the lower strata, to which also the roots of plants are 
enabled to reach, owing to the breaking up of the hard 
“ pan ” which usually underlies the top three or four inches 
of soil, which now, under the native system of cultivation, 
alone are disturbed in the so-called process of ploughing. 
