Unless when a region is dependent upon rain for its fertility, and the rainfall faila, tho soil in India yields the husbandman his fair return. In Sind the rainfall is always meagre. So Sind has learned to trust to artificial irrigation from the Indus, and Sind is safe from famine. Assam and Burma, tho country between tho 'Western Ghats and the sea, the tract immediately east of the Ghats, the valleys of the Nerbadda and the Tapti, enjoy rains or river floods, which have never deserted them. Eastern Bengal, in the parts between the Ganges and the Jumna, is now completely protected by its irrigation canals. It is the portion of India with a total average rainfall from 20 to 35 inches which is subject to drought when the south-west monsoon fails, and consequently is the prey of famine. No past famine has been more intense than that of 1876-78, so none may exceed it in the future. On that presumption, the largest population likely to be severely affected by famine at one time is put at 30 millions. An estimate for relief on a. scale double that given in Madras and Bombay during the last famine, shows four and a. half millions as the maximum number of objects of relief in the height of the fanaine, and from two to two and a half millions as needing aid for the space continuously of a year. For each working adult male of this mass the commissioners compute that a pound and a half of flour or rice is sufficient; for a roan doing light work, a pound and a quarter ; and for a man doing none, still less. A woman needs rattier less than a man, and children from half to a quarter the quantity, according to age. The com missioners recommended that for all who can work, public work should be provided, at fixed reasona.ble wages, the same for all, and on which life and health can be maintained.' Piece-work, unless as an experiment, they refused to recom mend. The works selected should be of permanent utility, and contiguous to the dwellings of those to be employed upon them. The true policy is to begin a series of comprehensive or connected undertakings of permanent utility, and to entrust their construction to professional engineers, who shall take care that none but the able be employed, and that they be paid regularly in money for a fair day's work. An unfinished canal in Orissa in
1871-72 sufficed to irrigate 100,000 acres, on which 750,000 cwt. of rice was grown.
The impression generally prevailing, that the preservation of life by Government measures of relief in Indian famines, is entirely a question of money, is erroneous. The same atmospheric con ditions which produce a scarcity of food, produce also epidemic diseases ; secondly, a larger pro portion of the mortality of a famine season is due to epidemic diseases than to absolute deficiency of food, although their destructiveness is increased by the people being, from want, less able to with stand them ; and thirdly, a point in the process of chronic starvation, when nutriment can no longer save life, is often reached before the people can obtain, or will seek, relief at a distance from their homes. After the famine of 1877, the ' Indian Government endeavoured to ascertain approxi mately the deaths it had caused, and by enumerat ing certain districts, with the following result :— The immediate effects of famine soon disappear. An Indian population grows normally at the rate of per cent. per annum, and this proportion is within the mark in ordinary times. And within two years of the great famine of 1877-78 its in juries were no longer apparent, while calamities of other kinds continue to be remembered for long periods.—Army Sanitary Comm. Rep. ; As. Soc. Journ. ; As. Res. ; Hunter's Rural Life in Bengal ; Famine Comm. Rep. ; India Administration 1?ep., vol. xii.; Proceedings of the Governnient of India ; Saturday Review, 1878 ; Sanitary Commissioner of Madras, Report ; Dr. W. W. Hunter in Geog. Magazine; Montgomery Martin's Fanzine Chrono logy, 1640 to 1841 Statistical Journal, 1843, i. 3d series, p. 468 ; :Macmillan's Magazine; Geog. Mag., May 1877 ; Khafi Khan ; Elphin. p. 510 ; Ward's Hindoos, p. 107. See Food.