ponding high land taxation are only fed by the export of raw materials. Any serious check to this, if continued for any length of time, will take India back to the early fifties so far as prices go, and will make the payment of taxes a very complex and embarrassing task, if not a physical impossibility. Dislocation of export will go far beyond the domain of luxury, comfort and convenience-mere matters of sentiment for an Indian agriculturist; it will mean for him a collapse of the entire fabric of land

revenue.

Of the main aricles of export, two have collapsed so far, cotton in Northern India and jute in Bengal. From the average prices ranging from Rs. 7 to Rs. 9 a maund of raw cotton during the last several years, it has suddenly come down to Rs. 3 or Rs. 4 a maund. Jute has proved an equally docile victim, even more so. Is there any sale of these commodities in the land? The sleeping ginning factories and jute factories and presses present a rueful sight. Practically there is little or business doing in either article at any price. The low prices quoted above are simply nominal; for practical purposes so far as the large quantities are concerned, the sale might be said to have totally collapsed.

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What is to be done? Will the crops lie and rot, as they did in the India of old whenever nature was more than usually generous? But then the cultivation of these articles was not carried on so enormously, taxes were light, and no hardship was consequently felt.

The American capitalists and government are doing something practical to meet a similar serious situation; and the question is whether we are sufficiently organised to buy up the whole of the two crops at reasonable prices and thus save a disaster. The question is not a mere philanthropic one, though the peasantry will be given an immense relief; it is consistent with self-interest as well. A very good gain is sure to be made by those who invest their money in the purchase of cotton or jute and have them ginned out or pressed in this slack season. Foreign traders who are accustomed to convert their merchandise into gold without much loss of time, would hardly care to lock their capital up in this business. Practicaly all the big manufacturing countries are at war, and what little mercantile enter

prise there remains in the few neutral powers, has been neutralised by the dangers, real or imaginary, of the trade routes. Japan and China might have given a partial relief, but the Eastern waters are hardly more safe. The little affair of Tsingtau is not yet over, and who cares for the raw materials or finished products? Nations engaged in establishing or maintaining their supremacy in the world, are evidently not in a mood to look to the minor interests of trade trade and business.

Our capitalists and Government, however, have a duty to perform to the poor ryot. They owe it equally to themselves to save the general economic balance a rude shock. One has heard much of late years of the birth of a national mercantile spirit in the land, though nothing of unusual development, so far as outward manifestations go, has taken place. The carrying trade is entirely in foreign hands as ever no foundations of a merchant fleet, however small, have been laid influx of foreign finished articles has not appreciably decreased; the import and export business mostly is regulated by foreigners. In fact no big venture to capture trade or manufacture has at all been attempted, the general petty individualistic type of trade holding true as

ever.

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Here is a splendid field for Indian capitalists. If no big syndicates are possible to be formed, individual action can do much. The war is sure to end, possibly sooner than many experts believe, because it is waged on a ruinously grand scale. petty war between two countries might have been possible to be protracted for an indefinitely long time in the old world, but with modern engines of destruction and the enormously enhanced strength of the combatants, the duration of war has much shortened. The world, moreover, cannot be in a state of war for any length of time; such abnormality must be in the nature of an earthquake-though ever so awful and grand but transient. It is so easy to guard compact bales of cotton or jute, the very despair of thieves and robbers. Then whatever reasonable prices might be given to the ryot, it will be nothing compared to what it is sure to fetch if withheld for a moderately long time. The Americans.

This article was written before the fall of Tsingtau.-Ed., M.R.

The chief cultivating classes are the Gujars, Jats, Merats, Rajputs, and Rawats. Of these the Jats are by far the best agriculturists. The cultivators are poor and the amount of the private debts is large and is roughly estimated at over 20 lakhs, almost entirely owing to the money-lending class.

The soil is poor, generally shallow and in many places the rocky strata are very near the surface. The soil is composed of a natural mixture of one-third of stiff yellow loam and two-thirds of the sand consisting of disintegrated mica schist and felspar. Alluvial soil is only found in the bed of the tanks, and clay is rare. Carbonate of lime is common in certain areas. The only rich soil deposits are found in the Pushkar valley.

The people follow to this day their old system of cultivation which they say is best suited to the local conditions. But in many places they are quite ignorant of even the basic principles of agriculture, as for example in matters of the conservation of moisture in the soil. People still use agricultural implemets of primitive des=cription.

The principal crops as considered from the area under its cultivation, are maize, jawar (great Indian millet,) barley, cotton, oil-seed, bajra (bulrush millet), and wheat. Cultivation of fibre crop, spices, and other susidiary crops are restricted to a very small area. The poppy is grown in the Todgarh tahsil, but the introduction of more stringent excise rules in 1901 has, however, entirely restricted the area under poppy, and practically stopped its growth.

The autumn crops are generally sown in July and reaped in October and November. The spring crops are sown in October and are reaped in March and April. Owing to the poverty of the soil and the exhaustion of irrigated land, which are frequently cropped twice in the year, heavy manuring is essential, and many cattle are kept for the purpose. Ashes, cow-dung, housesweepings, and vegetable are in common use. Nightsoil is in considerable demand in villages near towns. Rotation of crops is based on the result of the local experience. For example a cotton field is left allow in the ensuing harvest, when it is sown with maize in the next autumn, Darley in the following spring, maize again In the next autumn, after which it is left

fallow during the spring before cotton is again sown in the autumn.

There is no indigenous breed of cattle worthy of note. Those in use belong to four stocks, the Rindikhan, Dhaora, Marwari, and Kehwari, of which the first gives the best milch cows, while the others are popular for field work. Horse-breeding is very restricted and the animals in use are of the baggage pony class. Sheep and goats are numerous. Grazing lands are fairly extensive, but a precarious rainfall spoils the province as a pastoral area. The prevalent cattle diseases are the pox, foot and mouth disease, black-quarter, and tympanitis.

Irrigation is only carried on from tanks and wells. The frequency of irrigation depends upon the crops, varying from fifteen to twenty watering in the case of chillies to two or three for maize.

It is in irrigation that lies the solution of the problem. The few remarks which I will now make on irrigation will refer more to the conservation of rainfall that renders irrigation possible than to the actual use of the water. People always think of providing the means of irrigation and not use the water for that purpose when they have got it,

It is at once apparent from the inspection of a general map of Rajputana that the range of hills that runs between Ajmer and Nasirabad forms a dividing water-shed for India. The rain which falls on the southern face finds its way into the Chambal, and so into the Bay of Bengal; that which falls on the opposite side drains into the Rann of Cutch.

As I have already said the rivers of Ajmer-Merwara have no big natural storage. They are really drains, not rivers. The term river implies a continuous flow of water. A drain is a channel which flows intermittently. When rain falls on the land which it traverses, indeed it is the rain running down into the lower parts of the land which has formed the drains. What do we see then in this. province? Floods of water in the monsoon which carry off all the rain as it falls with the exception of that which soaks into the ground. What is the consequence? When the rain ceases, the drains are dry again, except a small trickle which flows into them, in the form of a spring, from the portion of the rain which has soaked into the ground. The object of the cultivator

should be to store some of the water which rushes off in floods and to use it for irrigation to supplement the rains at times. when it is insufficient for the crops.

Now before coming to the question of storage I should like to say a word about the evil caused by the floods I have mentioned. In the first place through them we lose water. Once it gets into the big drains it is gone so far as the land on which it fell is concerned, and the owners of the land have lost the thing they mostly want, but in rushing down the drains it has taken away something else with it; namely, it has torn away the best part of the soil. The rain water while running off the land picks up the most fertile part of the soil and carries it to the Rann of Cutch, or the Bay of Bengal. Our friends the Gujratis and the Bengalis benefit by what AjmerMerwara and Rajputana have lost. We are left with the sand and gravel, stone and rock, while they get our good alluvial soil. This is bad enough; we have lost our water and are also losing our soil, but that is not all. These floods have gradually scoured out the channels of the drains so that they are now many feet below the level of the country. By this the country on either side of drains is rendered practically useless as it has turned ravines. Secondly, owing to the bed of the drains being so low, the level of the water in the wells is also being gradually lowered and the wells themselves have to be sunk deeper and deeper. If there were means of storage all over the country so that only a small portion of the rain water went off into the drains, à small channel would suffice to carry off the surplus water, and the spring water level in the ground would be comparatively higher and the wells not so very deep. But owing to there being no storage all over the country, the drainage has scoured out a large and deep channel and the water level under the ground is much lower. It is obvious that wells must be much deeper before water can be reached. But it is not the wells near the drains that are affected; as the channel gets deeper and deeper so the area of its evil influence extends further and further from the drainage itself. These are the chief evils people have suffered and are still suffering.

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Some of the evil effects can be counteracted by the following measures:

I. Let more tanks be constructed over

the country, for then a very considerable portion of water will soak into the ground and collect there in the underground reservior and which will in turn feed the wells around it. In the case of the farmers of Ajmer-Merwara to whom no other way of farming save of dry farming is open, it will be the best to thus intercept the rain water.

II. The individual farmer can benefit himself and the state he lives in by making his field a tank. If it were possible for every field in the country to be surrounded with a bund 3 to 4 feet high not a drop of rain water will run off from over the surface of the country. It would remain on the field on which it fell and would gradually soak into the ground improving the underground reservoir as wells. No more of our good soil will be then sent down to the Bay of Bengal or the Rann of Cutch and the water that we so daily want will be stored on our own land.

It is not impossible that every field should be surrounded with a 3 or 4 feet bank but every field so treated is so much. gained, and if considerable number of fields are so done in any one district, an immense benefit would accrue to it. Every cultivator has a great deal of time which he wastes in gossiping in the village 'Hataies.' If instead of letting them sit idle, the landlords, landowners and the jagirdars were to induce them to work on the embanking of the fields, they would do untold good. It may be urged that it would be impossible for a single man to embank the field but why should the men in the village not combine and work together in one field until it is done, then on to the other and so on until all are done? The farmers are learning the lesson of co-operation in these days under the cooperative societies in this province. It is not really difficult if some leading and influential men were to start and assist the villagers to combine, for it is hoped that the cultivators will heartily respond, they are now trained and and well understand their benefit owing to the hard labour taken by Rai Sahib Munshi Gopi Nath, father of the co-operative societies in Ajmer-Merwara. Imagine what a lot could be done with all the plough bullocks and men of the villages in this way if they only set their mind to it.

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Some may say that in practice it is quite impossible, and may ask what it

would cost to embank a field if it had to be done on contract or by coolies. It depends on the size of the field but we can roughly estimate it for about Rs. 20 per bigha, which is not a big sum, if they even ask it from the central banks as a land improvement loan. III. It would also be beneficial if the

local Government which has already spent large sums on the tanks in the district in times of the great famines will also undertake to put small bunds in the forest area, thereby making the pastural area of the province more safe.

RAM SWAROOP MATHUR.

"H

ALIBUT, my dear fellow, you are worried."

"I am, Bliss."

"There is something on your mind." "There is." Mr. Halibut dropped back in his easy-chair and eyed his cigar dismally.

Mr. James Bliss leant forward and gazed anxiously at his old friend and guest. They had just dined, and the host had been puzzled by the other's dullness. Both were men of a little over fifty, and their friendship dated from boyhood. They were bachelors.

"If I can be of any assistance at all, Halibut, please say so," said Bliss gently. "Forgive my mentioning it, but for some time I have suspected that all was not well with you. Is-is it the case that you got badly hit by the Cosmopolitan Copper collapse ?"

"A thousand thanks, Bliss; but it isn't money. I will tell you the truth-there is no one else I could trust, and I am sorry I did not tell you before." He paused and sighed.

"I am at your service always," said his friend.

"I believe you, Bliss, I believe you. Well -to come to the point-I am-er-entang. led."

me! That was hardly friendly, Halibut. Come, was it now? But why-"

"I am engaged to Mrs. Ida Cornish, the -the adventuress." Mr. Halibut, having made this announcement, sucked savagely at his dead cigar.

"My dear fellow!" his friend exclaimed. "What is this you are telling me? I do not understand. I do not know Mrs. Ida Cornish, not even by name; but you tell me you are engaged to marry her, and then, before I can get out a word of congratulation, you describe her as an adven-"

"Congratulations, Bliss, would be out of place," said Halibut. "It is your commiseration I require, and-and your assistance, if possible.

"My dear friend, you shall have anything I can give you. But I am still very much in the dark.'

"The whole affair is simply explained. Three months ago, coming over on the Caronia, I met Mrs. Ida Cornish. To put it briefly, she attracted me, for she is beautiful, while I don't think she can be over five-and-thirty. She had been widowed ten years before I met her. Her manner, I am ready to admit, is excessively charming. We met frequently-very frequentlyon board. On the journey from Liverpool to town I was able to be of some service to her, and obtained her address. She put up at the Talbot, a quiet hotel in Suffolkstreet. She seemed to have no friends in