and maintained by an elaborate system of irrigation. See paragraph in this article on Canals and Irrigation.

Climate. India extends 151⁄2 degrees within north tropical latitudes, and 121⁄2° within the temperate zone. Owing to modifying circumstances, the climates contained within this range are not only extremely various, but distributed with great irregularity. One of the chief modifying circumstances is the distribution of moisture, the great regulators of which are the monsoons. The northeast monsoon blows from October to March, the southwest from April to September. The latter surcharged with vapor from the Indian Ocean condenses in torrents on the heights of the western Ghats, and forms the rivers which flow to the east. Before it reaches the Coromandel coast in the southeast it becomes a dry wind which scorches up vegetation, In the west, on the contrary, this wind passes over the low plains in the lower valley of the Indus, is arrested by the Himalayas, and fills the tributaries of the Ganges. The northeast monsoon runs a similar course in the opposite direction, but deriving less moisture from the Bay of Bengal, which is of less extent than the Indian Ocean, it has less influence on the climate, and its season is in general the dry one. The great plain of Southern India being exposed to greater heat than that of Northern India, and not being watered by the snow-fed streams of the Himalayas, is naturally much less fertile. The seasons in India are divided into rainy, cool and hot. The periods of these different seasons vary according to latitude and modifying circumstances. On the Malabar coast the rain begins earliest to the south. At Calcutta rain falls from June to October; the cool season begins about November, the hot season in February, the heat increasing gradually till May. In Calcutta where the mean annual temperature is about 79°, the range is from 50° to 85° F. In Bombay the mean annual temperature is about 82°, the range about 10°; in Madras mean about 84°, range 7° to 8°. The annual rainfall in India is much greater than that of England; but it is distributed with great irregularity. The basin of the Indus, including all Sind and the half of the Punjab, is an arid region with an annual rainfall under 15 inches. The high plateau in the interior of South India has an annual rainfall generally under 30 inches. On the whole Malabar coast the rainfall is over 75 inches; at Kananor it reaches 128 inches. On the Coromandel coast it is very much lower, being 45 inches at Vizagapatam, 50 inches at Madras, while farther south it falls below 30 inches. Between the arid region of the Indus and the Ganges runs a dry zone of 100 to 200 miles wide, including Lahore, Delhi and Agra, with a rainfall between 15 and 30 inches. The valleys of the Tapti, the Nerbudda, the lower part of the Jamna, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, are generally over 30. Along the slopes of the Himalayas from Cashmere east to the boundaries of India, and southeast to the mouths of the Mahánadi runs a belt of country with a rainfall over 60 inches, within which is included the lower course of the Ganges. Within this is another belt, including a lower slope of the Himalayas, and the lower course of the Brahmaputra before its junction with the Ganges, in which the rainfall rises above 75 inches.

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Forests. The three most valuable timber trees of India are the teak (Tectona grandis), the sál or saul (Shorea robusta), and the deodar (Cedrus Deodara). The teak grows most luxuriantly along the Bombay coast, in Travancore and Cochin and in Burma, but it is also abundant throughout much of Central India and elsewhere. The sál is the chief forest tree of the Himalayan slopes, from the Satlej eastward to Assam, and it grows also in the forests of Central India and the Eastern Gháts. The home of the deodar is the northwestern Himalayas. Among the most valuable trees of the densely forested Western Ghats from Kanara Travancore and Mysore are teak, blackwood, bamboos, sandal-wood, a kind of ebony and Calophyllum inophyllum, whose wood is prized for the spars of ships. In the United Provinces and neighboring districts the leading species are sál and several varieties of pines, and in the extensive jungles of the Ganges delta the most useful wood is that of the sundari (Heretiera littoralis). The forests of Assam yield sál. Pinus Kasya, caoutchouc (Ficus elastica), and other useful species and plantations of teak, tun or toon (Cedrela toona), and sissoo (Dalbergia sissoo) have been laid out. Besides tek the Burmese forests contain ironwood and the cutch-tree (catechu). Before the formation of the Indian Forest Department the forests were recklessly destroyed by timber-cutters, nomadic cultivators and others, but large forest areas in all the provinces have now been marked off as reserved forests under the immediate care of the forest officers, and other forest areas have been brought under partial conservancy. Timber-cutting and grazing have been either prohibited or restricted; and plantations of the more useful trees have been formed in many parts of the country. In every province a few of the most valuable timber trees are declared to be reserved trees, and can only be felled under special license. Forest revenue is raised by royalities on, or by the sale of, timber or other produce, and by the issue at specified fees of permits to graze cattle, or to extract for sale timber, firewood, charcoal, bamboos, canes, and other minor forest produce. The reserved forests now cover an area of more than 96,867 square miles, and the protected or partially conserved forests occupy other 142,000 square miles. Some of the native states, such as Mysore, Travancore, Baroda and Kashmir, have followed the example of the British government.

Flora. Where moisture is plentiful, as in the valley of the Ganges, vegetation is superabundant. The delta of the Ganges, in particular, called the Sunderbunds, is covered with dense jungle full of the largest wild animals, and the excessive vegetation renders most of the mouths unnavigable. There are many other similar tracts of extensive forest and jungle. On the Coromandel coast, where the heat which reaches 100° F., vegetation is not luxurious, and the delta of the Indus from the southeast of the Punjab to the Ran, or great salt marsh of Kach (Cutch), forms a great sandy desert, continuous across the river with the desert of Baluchistan, and with a wide band stretching across the whole continent of Asia to Central Africa. In the various altitudes of the Himalayas forms of vegetable and animal life belonging to all the various climates from tropical to polar are to be found. These as well as

the Western Ghats are magnificently wooded. Orchids, rhododendrons and other valuable flowers are common. Among the staple natural products of India are rice, maize, wheat, barley, cotton, flax, hemp, jute, rhea, indigo, tea, coffee, sugar-cane, opium, tobacco, ginger, pepper cardamoms, palms bearing nuts which are extensively consumed, anise, dye-woods, etc. European fruits abound, and among indigenous fruits may be mentioned the mango, plantain, pomegranate, citron, date, almond, grape, guava, pineapple and tamarind. Palms, including the date, cocoanut, palmyra, betel-nut and other species, the banyan, and bamboo, are common features of the vegetation.

Fauna. The elephant, the rhinoceros, the camel, the tiger, a few lions in the northwest, the leopard, bears, hyena, jackal, wolf and numerous smaller carnivora, the boar, antelopes, deer, wild ox, ass, sheep and goat, monkeys in great variety, and the greater number of European quadrupeds are found. There are several large species of ox, such as the gaur or "bison" and the arnee or wild buffalo. Crocodiles, snakes (including the dreaded cobra), and reptiles in all varieties are very numerous; of birds, the eagle, vulture, falcons, peacock, parrots, king-fishers, mina-bird, partridge, quail, heron, stork, are characteristic species, and other varieties, both indigenous and common to other regions, are numerous. Fish are plentiful and in great variety, both on the coasts and in the rivers.

Land Tenure and Revenue.- In India the state, or the monarch, has always enjoyed a share in the rent or profits from the land. Before the advent of the Mohammedans and the establishment of the Mogul Empire the almost universal unit for the purposes of revenue collection was the village community. In a village, community land was held, not by private owners, but by cultivators occupying it under the village corporation, and the land revenue was collected. from the head-man as representing the community. With the Mohammedan conquest new methods of revenue collection were introduced. The state claimed one-sixth of the gross produce of the soil as its share, and entrusted its collection to persons who each agreed to pay a definite amount from the district assigned to him. These revenue farmers, known as zamindars, were often local magnates under the old Hindu system.

The term "settlement" is applied in Indian revenue affairs to the process of assessing the land revenue demand. Occasionally, in newly acquired or specially backward tracts, the land revenue is assessed for a short term of years on a general review of the circumstances and capabilities of the land and people concerned; such a process is called a summary settlement. But a regular settlement is a more complicated affair, and consists of many stages; the revision is arranged to take place once every thirty years. In the first place, every separate estate or holding is demarcated by permanent marks on the ground; and disputes between neighboring right-holders are investigated and decided. Every estate or holding is then surveyed and mapped, all boundary-marks, wells and buildings being shown on the field or cadastral maps. After the field maps are prepared, the next process is to classify or record each field according to its productive value, as evidenced by

its soil, the amount of its produce, or by the rent paid by the farmer to the landlord. A record is at the same time drawn up of all rents paid, and of all rights, whether landlord rights, or tenant rights, or rights of user, over all the ground, buildings, wells and trees shown in the map. Then the assessing officer (or settlement officer, as he is often called) compiles the information obtained for all the lands in a circle of villages; and on a review of all these data, of the past fiscal history of the tract, of the range of prices, of the accessibility of markets, and of other general considerations, he proposes government rent rates or revenue rates for the several classes of lands in the circle. The rent rates or revenue rates proposed by the settlement officer, and the grounds on which they were based, are then investigated by a superior officer, and are not adopted until they have been accepted or modified by the latter. The rent averages in most cases at one-half the gross produce of the land.

In provinces where the zamindari tenure prevails, that is, where single proprietors or proprietary brotherhoods possess large estates of several hundreds or thousands of acres, the state revenue is assessed at an aliquot part (usually about one-half) of the ascertained or assumed rental. The revenue, though it is fixed with reference to acreage rates on the land actually cultivated, is assessed on, and is payable by, each estate as a whole; the assessment remains unchanged for the 30 years, or other period of the settlement; the proprietor can bring as much as he likes of his waste and fallow land under the plough; and is only on reassessment at the end of the term of the settlement that the state obtains any increase of revenue on account of the extensions of cultivation during the settlement period. In provinces where the rayatwari tenure prevails, that is, where each petty proprietor holds directly from the state, generally cultivates his own land, and has no landlord between himself and the government, the revenue is separately assessed at an acreage rate on each petty holding, and land revenue becomes payable at once, or after a short term of grace in the case of uncleared lands, on all extensions of cultivation. The rayatwari proprietor is at liberty to throw up his holding, or any portion of it, at the beginning of any year, after reasonable notice; the zamindar, or large proprietor, engages to pay the revenue assessed upon him for the term of the settlement.

The land revenue assessment was fixed permanently more than 100 years ago on the greater part of Bengal, about a third of Madras, and certain southern tracts of the Northwest now the United Provinces, paying in all about $14,250,000 a year. In the temporarily settled tracts, comprising the rest of India, it is fixed periodically for terms of 12 to 30 years. In the nine chief provinces (Bengal, Bombay and Sind, Madras, the United Provinces of Agra and Ouah, Central Provinces, Punjab, Burma, Assam, Berar) the number of rayatwari holders is about 273,000, of whom none belong to Bengal, Punjab, and the United Provinces and Oudh. The total number of zamindars and village communities is about 318,500, of which only Sind and Berar have none: The total number of holdings is thus about 591,500. In the greater part of Bengal

land is held by zamindars under a permanent settlement, but the tenants are protected by recent legislation. The rayatwari system is the prevalent one in Madras and in Bombay a similar system has been established. In the latter province the cultivators are now protected by law against the extortions of the money-lenders. The village community is still common in the United Provinces and the Punjab. In Oudh much of the land is held by talukdars, who have been granted certain privileges which are denied to the zamindars.

Agriculture. The total area accounted for in the agricultural returns for 1913 was 748,868,885 acres, of which 80,851,369 are under forest, 146,386,852 not available for cultivation, and 163,784,575 culturable waste and current fallows. The net crop-yielding area is 224,165,602 acres, or, taking account of land cropped several times in a year, 300,000,000 acres. The three chief food-grains of India are rice, millet, and wheat. Rice is the staple food of about a third of the population, and was grown on 76,792,000 acres in 1915, but it is nevertheless essentially a local crop, which can be cultivated with profit only under exceptional circumstances. Of the total rice area 40 million acres belong to Bengal, where it is the staple crop, and about seven million each to Madras and Burma. Over 90 per cent of the cultivated area of Lower Burma is under rice, and it is grown on nearly three quarters of the area of Assam, about one-third of that of the Central Provinces, a quarter of that of Oudh, while it is of importance also in the United Provinces and Sind. It is grown to a less extent in the Punjab and Bombay. Rice is also cultivated by hill tribes in all parts of India. In Bengal there are two chief rice harvests in the year, the άus or early crop, chiefly for local consumption, and the áman or winter crop, chiefly for export; but in Lower Burma, whence most of the exported Indian rice comes, there is but one harvest, corresponding to the Bengal winter crop. The total area under wheat was in 1915, 30,143,000 acres, mainly in the Punjab, (71⁄2 million), where it is the leading crop, the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, the Central Provinces, Bombay, Central India and Bengal. The area under the various kinds of millet and maize, which constitute the food of poor people as well as cattle, is 43 million acres, chiefly in Bombay (131⁄2 million), Madras, Punjab, United Provinces, Central Provinces, Sind, Oudh, Bengal and Upper Burma. The chief varieties of millet grown in India are joár, or jawári, or cholam, great millet (Sorghum vulgare); bájra, or kambu, spiked millet (Pennisetum typhoideum); and ragi, or náchani (Eleusine corocana), grown chiefly in Southern India. About 8,000,000 acres are sown with barley, chiefly in the upper Ganges valley, the Himalayan valleys, and the Punjab. Gram crops or pulses, especially chick-pea, green-gram, horsegram, lentil and pigeon-pea, take up 10 million acres. The large native demand for oil has been reinforced in recent times by a rapidly-increasing foreign demand, and in consequence the cultivation of oil-seeds has greatly developed. They are grown in many parts as a second crop on ground from which rice or some other food crop has already been taken. The chief varieties cultivated are linseed, rape-seed, mustard-seed, sesamum (til or gingelly), ground nut and castor-oil, and the total area occupied by them is

16 million acres, chiefly in Bengal, Bombay and Sind, Madras, Central Provinces and Punjab. The area under ground-nuts in Bombay and Madras is about 1,663,000 acres. The cultivation of vegetables for household use is general, and near some of the towns it is carried on more extensively. Potatoes thrive best in the more elevated tracts. Among cultivated fruits are the mango, guava, orange, melon, citron, lime, fig, plantain, pineapple, pomegranate, tamarind, shaddock, jack, papaw and custard-apple. The area under sugar-cane is about 2,375,000 acres in Bengal (especially Orissa), United Provinces, Punjab, Oudh, Madras and Bombay. Jaggery sugar is made from the bastard date-palm which is grown for this purpose in the neighborhood of Calcutta and in northeastern Madras. The tea crop is one of great and increasing importance, and occupies about 636,000 acres, of which 400,000 are in Assam, the rest being in Bengal, Punjab, United Provinces, Madras, Burma and native states. With the exception of a few hundred acres in Burma, Assam, etc., the whole of the coffee-growing area, amounting to about 280,000 acres, is in Southern India, in Mysore, Koorg, Madras, Travancore and Cochin. The chief cinchona plantations are the government ones at Darjiling and in the Nilgiris. The tree was introduced by the Indian government.

Cotton is one of the most valuable vegetable productions of India. The total area under the cotton-plant, including the Native states, is 17,967,000 acres in 1915, distributed thus: Bombay and Sind (5,000,000), Berar (2,500,000), Hyderabad (1,700,000), Madras (1,400,000), United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (1,250,000), Punjab (1,750,000), Central Provinces (1,000,000), and smaller areas in Central India, Rajputana, Burma and Bengal. Next in importance to cotton among Indian fibres comes jute, which is cultivated in eastern Bengal along the valleys of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, accounting for 2,377,000 acres. The cultivation of the mulberry, for the rearing of the silk-worm, is chiefly carried on in eastern and northern Bengal, with Murshidabad as a centre. The indigo industry is one of the oldest in India, but it is at present in a languishing condition. The area under the plant is about 314,000 acres. The opium poppy is cultivated in Behar and the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, in the Punjab and in the native states of Rajputana and Central India, occupying in all about 200,000 acres. (See below under Finance). Tobacco is grown in every district for local consumption. Among the numerous minor cultivated vegetable products of India are turmeric, chillies, ginger, coriander, aniseed, black cummin, fenugreek, pepper, cardamoms, betel-pepper, areca or betel-nut palm, cocoanut palm, palmyra palm and date-palm. Experimental cultivation of rhea, rubber, sisal-hemp and other valuable economic plants has been carried out on the experimental farms maintained by government in various parts of the country.

Stockraising. Horned cattle are used in agricultural operations throughout all India, except Sind and the Punjab, where camels generally take their place. The total number of cattle in India is over 120,000,000, of sheep and goats 40,000,000, of horses, ponies, mules and donkeys, 2,500,000, and of camels about 250,000. There are large numbers of buffaloes in all parts of the country. A public veterinary department

attends to the improvement of the breeds of horses, ponies, mules and cattle, the prevention of disease among domestic animals and the provision of veterinary instruction. Its operations are mainly confined to Northern India, where the conditions are most favorable for the breeding of horses for military purposes.

Commerce. From a very early period down till comparatively recent times Western traders visited India in order to obtain the gold and silver, jewels, spices and other costly products for which India was then celebrated, but the present foreign trade of India has developed under British rule and rests on an entirely different basis. In the year 1700 the total value of the exports from India was under $5,000,000, in 1834 the value had risen to $50,000,000, and in 1913 goods and treasure to the value of about $800,000,000 are exported every year. In 191314 the total value of private imports by sea and government imports of stores, as well as treasure was $782,492,030. The total value of private exports of Indian merchandise, foreign merchandise re-exported, government and treasure was $853,630,255, the total sea-borne trade being $1,636,122,285. The chief articles of import were: cotton woven goods, metals and hardware, oils, chiefly petroleum, sugar, railway material, machinery and mill-work, cotton yarns, chemicals, medicines, dyes, woolen goods, silk, raw and manufactured, provisions, liquors and apparel. The chief exports were: jute, raw and woven, husked rice, hides and skins, oil-seeds, raw cotton, tea, opium, cotton yarns, wheat, indigo, coffee, raw wool and cotton woven goods. The proportion of trade directly with European countries is about 632 per cent omitting the trade with Egypt much of which really goes to Europe. The trade with the United Kingdom is over 60 per cent of the trade with Europe and nearly 45 per cent of the total trade. Next to the United Kingdom the chief countries trading with India are China, Germany, United States, Straits Settlements, France, Japan, Belgium, Ceylon, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Russia. The figures for 1913-14 show that, while Indian imports of American goods were valued at about $15,967,000, Indian exports to America amounted to $72,500,000. The chief articles of export appear to be gunny bags and cloth, of which latter America takes more than all other countries. The trade of India with America, however, is only of short standing, but wisely organized, is capable of being greatly expanded. Before the War, Germany supplied many things this country should furnish, particularly in the electrical and chemical lines, in which it at present holds the market. Other important articles of Indian export are tea, jute and jute manufactures, wheat, oil-seeds, rice, leather, wool, indigo, coffee, teak-wood, cotton and lac. The share of the five chief seaports of India in the total foreign trade (excluding treasure and government stores) in 1914-15 was as follows: Calcutta, $382,019,707; Bombay, $285,567,573; Rangoon, $69,813,963; Karáchi, $95,020,424; Madras, $49,020,000. India has many other seaports of minor importance. The value of merchandise and treasure carried in coasting vessels during 1914-15 was $334,478,604. trade across the land frontiers is steadily increasing, the chief item among imports being

The

food grains, and among exports cotton goods. Much greater than her trade with foreign countries is the internal trade of India, but no returns of its amount are available. It is mostly in the hands of natives, and to a large extent in those of particular groups or castes. It is still carried on, as it has long been, at village markets, town bazaars, religious fairs and similar gatherings, but the development of railway and canal communication and the transformation in the system of agriculture have already altered its character in many ways.

Manufactures.-The domestic industries of India, such as weaving and spinning, pottery, brass-work, iron-work and art work of many kinds, continue to be practised after ancient methods all over the continent of India. But Indian fabrics and products, made on a small scale by workers at their homes, have for years past been giving way before the cheaper, less artistic, and often less durable cotton yarn and fabrics, and the iron or steel products of British factories. Meanwhile an important manufacturing industry has been growing up, and steam-power factories are at work, among which those for spinning and weaving cotton, for spinning and weaving jute, for making paper, for husking and cleaning rice, for sawing timber, and for brewing beer, are the most important. Steam power is also largely employed in factories, on tea gardens and indigo estates. In 1912 the number of cotton-mills in British India and native states was 241, containing 85,676 looms and 6,100,632 spindles, and giving employment to 240,513 persons. Of these mills 136 were in Bombay Province (80 in Bombay City), the rest being in Madras, Bengal, Central Provinces, United Provinces, Burma, Punjab and Berar, besides some of the native states. The number of jute-mills was 61 containing 34,033 looms and 708,716 spindles, and employing over 204,092 persons. All the jute-mills are in Bengal, except one in Cawnpore, which is the chief manufacturing centre of the United Provinces. Four woolen mills produce blankets, serges and cloths worn by the army and the police. The largest brewery is at Murree, in the Punjab Himalayas. Among other industrial works of importance are silk-mills, soapfactories, tanneries, iron and brass foundries, sugar-factories, coffee-works, cotton-presses and ginning-factories, jute-presses, rope-factories, oil-mills, cutch and lac factories, flour-mills, ice-factories, pottery and tile factories, bonecrushing works, tobacco and cigar factories, silk filatures, glass-factories, dye-works, indigofactories, printing-presses and dairy farms. The total number of persons employed in all these manufacturing industries is about 700,000. The daily wages of unskilled labor in a factory vary, according to locality, from 2 to 4 annas (4 to 8 cents).

Shipping and Navigation. In 1913-14 8,617 vessels of 17,386,408 tons burden entered and cleared the ports in British India, as against 8.001 vessels of 12,910,823 tons in 1908-09. Of these 4,951 were of British nationality, 1,697 native, 503 British Indian and 1,466 foreign.

Railways and Roads. The first Indian railway, from Bombay to Thana, was opened in 1853. The main trunk lines constructed from that time till about 1875 were built and man