Dr. Boyle gives the following arrangement of the countries of which the plants, will grow in the different parts of India :— Crops.—Many parts, alike of the northern and southern districts, have two crops during the year,—one called the kharif or rain crop, sown in June, and reaped in October ; the other, sown in October, and reaped in March and April, called the rabi or spring or cold - weather crop. The latter, embracing the months which approximate in temperature to those of the season of cultivation in colder countries, corresponds with them also in the nature of the plants cultivated, as for instance wheat, barley, sorghum, oats, and millet, peas, beans, vetch, tares, chick-pea, pigeon-pea, and lentils ; tobacco, safflower, and chicory ; flax, and plants allied to mustard and rape, as oil seeds ; carrot, coriander, and cummin, and other seeds of a similar kind, as aj wain, sonf, soya, and anison. In the rainy season, a totally different set of plants engages the agriculturist's attention, as rice, cotton, indigo, and maize, with sorghum, pulse, paspalum, most of the tropical legumes, as well as several of the cucumber and gourd tribes, together with the sesamum for oil, and the varieties of the egg plant as a vegetable. Phi sunn and sunni species of Corchorus and Crota laria cordage plants are also cultivated at thi season. In the extreme N.W. countries, as, fo: instance, throughout Afghanistan, the climate excessive. The cold of the winter is intense, tin spring is damp and raw, and the summer, durinf which hot west winds prevail, is intensely hot a all elevations. The crops are chiefly wheat ant barley, even up to 10,000 feet elevation. Rice fi cultivated in great quantity at Ja]alabad, 200( feet ; at Kabul, 6400 feet ; and to a considerabh extent at Ghazni, 7730 feet. Poplars, willows and date-palm trees are extensively planted, a; well as mulberry, walnut, apricot, apple, pear and peach trees, and also the Elmagnus orientalis which bears an eatable fruit. The vine abounds m in all warm and dry temperate climates. Th( majority of the Afghan and Tibetan plants arc also, on the one side, natives respectively of the Caspian steppes and N. Persia, and of Siberia or the other.
The date is cultivated in Baluchistan up to 450( feet ; and a dwarf palm, Chamierops Ritchieana Griffith, occurs abundantly in many places, but with a somewhat local distribution.
The area of the entire region under node( is 1,308,332 square miles, and its population 253,891,821. Excluding Assam and Britisl Burma, both of which are beyond Hindustan ii Further India, the British administer 876,972 sq miles of territory, with a population of 193,270,70( souls ; and the states in alliance, feudatory anc mediated, have an area of 573,772 square miles with a population of 52,002,924.
Races.—The- British territory is chiefly in tin plains, and its population at the census of 187] comprised 731 per cent. of Hindus and Sikhs 211 per cent. of Mahomedans, and 5 per cent. o all others, including under this title Buddhists hills, Christians, Jews, Parsees, Bramhoes, anc Hillmen. As this page is passing through the press, portions only of the 1881 census have beer made public, and the figures are to some extent not up to date. Under the designation Hindu are included almost all who profess, in some form, tin Brahmanic religions, or who are worshippers oi local deities, of whom about 10 millions an Brahmans, 5 millions are Kshatriyas and Rajputs 105k millions of other castes ; millions do not recognise caste ; and millions are aboriginal tribes or semi-Hinduized aboriginals. In 1881
the numbers were as under :— Hindus, . . 187,937,450 Jains, . . . 1,221,891 Sikhs, . . . 1,853,426 Christians, . 1,862,639 Mahomedans, 50,121,585 Aborigines, . 6,426,511 Buddhists, . 3,418,884 Others,. . . 1,049,43E The Buddhists are almost all inhabitants of Burma, and not of Hindustan, but with the incom plete census reports the residence respectively cannot be distinguished.
The ancestors of the present inhabitants, dur ing the bygone ages, either as immigrants or am conquerors, have been entering India from tin north and west. How little these have amalga mated, may be judged of by mentioning that out o: 1030 villages lying here and there between th6 Jumna and Sutlej, and which were under British management in 1844, there were found to be 41! different tribes of agriculturists. And as characteristic of the rebellion of 1857 and 1858 It was observed that certain classes of villagers attacked and destroyed other classes ;—the power ful hand of a regular government being tempor arily removed, the ancient antipathies of race at once came into play. Dwelling amongst each other, door to door, but yet never mixing, neither eating together nor intermarrying, most of the races remain as distinct as when, 10, 16, 20, 30, SO, and 50 centuries ago, they came to the south. It is this separating system which has kept the stocks of Aryan and Turanian races of India pure. On the slightest suspicion as to descent, all inter course ceases, and the descendants, in different lines from the same recognised ancestor, form new castes. In this way almost every family of a few hundred years' duration is now broken up. The cause of the origin of this exclusive propensity is unknown, further than that the system of mite and the foims of Brahmanic worship commenced amongst the East Aryans after their passage of the Sutlej, and now every Aryan and most Turanian households are guided by its rules. The tribes and castes are everywhere numerous. It has been estimated that in Bengal alone, if their sub divisions and septa and clans be taken into ac count, they would amount to many thousands. The Bombay Census Report of 1881 enumerates 1245.
Many of the aboriginal tribes, now under the British or feudatory rulers, are broken national ities, as the Gond, the Bhil, the Kathi, the Gujar, the hair, the Meeua, the Bhar, the Kurku, the Maria, the Khond, the Santa], the Rol. There are smaller tribes in Chutia Nagpur and the Tributary Mahals, wild mountain races in Julpiguri, with more com pact clans of Mongoloid tribes in the Garo, Khassya, Jaintia, and Naga Hills, and in Tiperah and the Chittagong Hill tracts. On the hills and in the plains in the extreme south of Peninsular India, are the Nair, the Coorgs, the Beder, the Male Arasar, the Kadar, the Yanadi, the Irular, the Bada,ga, the Toda, the Kotar and Kurumbar, and the Saura, the Chenchwar of the Eastern Ghats.