make it extremely difficult to carry out segregation and other sanitary measures on the requisite scale; and, while much has been achieved, the preventible loss of life is still very great. The most striking success hitherto obtained has been the development of preventive inoculation against Rinderpest, the most costly plague of all, by a method which does not offend the susceptibilities of the people, and which-viewed by them at first with the utmost suspicion-is gradually by its effectiveness winning popular support, so that the control of this and other diseases is now within the range of practical possibility.

Apart from sanitary work, the Veterinary Department, in association with the Agricultural Departments, is concerned with the question, or rather the complex of questions, of the maintenance and improvement of the cattle-supply. The great extension of cultivation which occurred in the 19th century, in itself an economic gain, has resulted in a serious diminution of the land available for grazing; the large breeding-herds which used to occupy the more extensive wastes are reduced in numbers and in size, while in the settled country the increasing difficulty of feeding cows and calves has curtailed the local production in point of quantity and in some places at least has led to marked deterioration in quality. The practical result to the peasant is that the cost of his working cattle, always the chief item in his capital outlay, has risen rapidly, while satisfactory animals are increasingly difficult to procure, and there is a real danger that the quality of tillage may in turn deteriorate. It is not likely that any single solution will be found for so complex a problem. On one side sanitary measures may considerably prolong the average duration of working-life; on another, schemes of insurance and the provision of credit will facilitate purchase; but the ultimate solution probably lies in the direction of an improvement in the general economic position of the peasant, so that he may be able not only to pay for but to feed more efficient animals than he keeps at the present time, and to economise their labour by the employment of better implements, together with a gradual rise in the standard of breeding so that the more efficient animals may be forthcoming to supply the new demand.

The three departments of whose activities we have given a brief and necessarily imperfect sketch cover no small portion of the wide field of improvement in the conditions of the peasant's industry. Water, the very life of the land; oxen, the main source of power; and command over the capital which is indispensable to every movement in the direction of increased efficiency-these carry us a considerable way. But the portion of the field reserved for the Agricultural Departments is itself almost immeasurable, comprising, to name only the most important branches, the provision of the most profitable crops, the improvement of the methods of tillage, the application of water and manures, the selection or design of the most suitable implements, organisation of the supply of the peasant's needs, and development of the markets for the disposal of his produce. A decade is a very short period for the consideration of problems such as these; and the progress which it is possible to record is evidence not only of the energy and judgment brought to bear on them, but of the urgency of the peasant's needs. A complete account of the results so far attained must be sought in the long series of blue-books containing the annual progress reports, but the general reader will find the main facts brought together in a popular form in Agriculture in India,' a narrative issued at the close of last year by the Government of India. This work is for the most part descriptive, and deals with concrete achievements rather than general principles; we do not propose to summarise it, but rather to attempt to state such conclusions as can fairly be drawn from facts recorded in it or available from other sources.

The first conclusion, which might have been anticipated from what is known of the history of the industry, is that the quickest way to increase the peasant's income is to provide him with a new type or variety of crop which will pay better than the old without necessitating large changes in the methods of tillage prevalent in the locality. The superiority of the new crop may rest either in the increased yield, or in the increased value of the yield; and, in so far as it is a question of value, the result is to help the peasant to follow the market, which he is usually unable to do without assistance.

In the preliminary work of finding the right crops,

little reliance is now placed on the method of acclimatisation, which had yielded such important results in the past. This method is still serviceable on occasion, and the recent introduction of the ground-nut crop in parts of India far from its original location may serve as an illustration of its value; but the progress of economic botany has enabled the peasant to benefit by methods of a different order. An ordinary Indian crop, say cotton or wheat, is a mixture of a large number of strains, good, bad and indifferent; and the first step is to sort these out and grow each strain separately so as to determine its character. Sometimes this process suffices; one of the pure strains is found to be, if not the ideal, at least a great improvement on the present crop, and then the preliminary work is finished. But if none of the pure strains is satisfactory, the botanist proceeds to make one by the process of hybridisation, using the technique developed since the re-discovery of Mendel's epoch-making work, which has converted plant-breeding from a mystery into an art-not indeed an easy art, but yet an art in which success is not a matter of mere chance.

The practical difficulties, however, begin when the new strain has been found or made. The strain must be kept pure, or deterioration through admixture will be rapid; the full price can be realised only when substantial quantities are produced in a defined area; while, in cases where natural hybridisation is to be feared, the old crop must be cleared out of the locality before the pure strain is introduced. All this means a large amount of organisation; and those who knew the peasant only as an ignorant and conservative individual entertained grave doubts of the possibility of effective action. The results actually achieved have, however, demonstrated very clearly that the thing can be done when once the officers in charge have won sufficient confidence to secure a start; thus pure strains of cotton, distinguished by a high proportion of lint to seed and a correspondingly high marketvalue, are now grown on a large and increasing scale in Bombay, Madras, and the Central and United Provinces, while hybrid wheats bred at Pusa within the last few years are rapidly spreading over Northern and Central India, and their virtues have already been recorded in the proverbial lore of the peasants of the Panjab.

Thus the experience of the last ten years goes far to justify the hope that the system of cropping throughout India can be brought up to date and altered as required to meet the changing conditions of the markets. Next let us glance at the prospects of what may be called plantsanitation, or the protection of the crops from insects, fungi and other enemies. Here the departments had practically to begin at the beginning; fifteen years ago the study of mycology and entomology was scarcely known in India, and rusts, smuts, wilts, and insect-attacks were calamities to be patiently endured. In the interval great progress has been made in the preliminary study of the life-histories of the most important enemies; and in particular cases the success achieved in practical work gives reasonable ground for hoping that in time the bulk of them can be brought under control in one or other of the ways which science has pointed out-the introduction of parasites, the growth of disease-resisting varieties, the modification of agricultural practice, or some other suitable expedient.

But even when the right crops have been grown and brought to maturity without loss by disease, the work of the departments is not finished. The peasant loses no small proportion of the value of his harvest by defective methods of gathering and preparing it for the market; and this loss increases greatly in importance when the market lies beyond his personal knowledge. In cases where the produce is marketed raw, improvement in this matter is mainly a question of introducing suitable implements, a question to be discussed later; but selling raw produce off the land is in itself often unsatisfactory, and thus the departments find themselves interested in such questions as a large development of the milling industry (both grain and oil-seeds), so that the offal and cake may be retained for the use of agriculturists. Such developments as these may be expected as part of the industrial movement which is progressing so painfully; the agricultural departments must be prepared to welcome and assist them, but cannot, unaided, bring them into existence. In other cases, where the peasant is accustomed to perform the early stages of manufacture, such as the preparation of raw sugar or the fermentation of tobacco, intricate questions arise on the border-line of agriculture

and industry. It is probable that the ultimate tendency will be to relieve the peasant of manufacturing processes, but this result cannot be achieved at once; and the agricultural departments must endeavour to improve the peasant's processes, pending the time when he will be no longer required to perform them.

So much may be said regarding agricultural products. Apart from seed, the chief needs in production are capital, working cattle, water, labour, implements and manures. Of these we have already dealt with capital, cattle, and the more important sources of water; the agricultural departments are concerned with the remainder, but naturally the supply of labour is outside their scope, and their function in regard to it is to assist in working out the changes in practice necessitated by its increasing scarcity. In regard to the supply of water, experience has shown that over large parts of the country the peasants not only need but cordially welcome assistance in locating wells and in improving their design, while the provision of pumps worked by oil-engines has opened out new vistas of improvement which a very few years ago were entirely unexpected. The work already accomplished in these directions is in itself important, and it holds out the promise of a very great increase in annual income as well as in protection from the worst effects of drought.

The mention of oil-engines brings us naturally to the more general question of the supply of implements and machinery. The indigenous agricultural implementsindigenous machines scarcely exist-were developed at a time when iron was dear, cattle plentiful, and labour cheap; they serve their purpose remarkably well, but at a cost of time, power and labour which renders them uneconomical to an increasing degree in the conditions which prevail to-day. The problem is to bring into play modern resources-cheap iron, and increased mechanical knowledge and manufacturing ability—so that the necessary work shall be done not less effectively at a substantial reduction in working cost, and without a disproportionate expenditure of capital. It may fairly be claimed that through the efforts of the departments, seconded by some enterprising manufacturers who have realised the scope of the potential market, this problem is now well