constitute a fourth zone, in which the rainfall is between thirty and sixty inches. Even here great distress is often caused by want of irrigation. The deltas of the Mahánadi and the Ganges, together with a strip of land along the northern side of the Ganges valley, have a rainfall of from sixty to seventy-five inches. Here irrigation becomes a luxury, often useful, but never necessary. On the West coast of the peninsula and on the East coast of the Bay of Bengal come two zones of excessive rainfall where irrigation finds no place. Mr. Markham gives a full and interesting account of the steps which the Government of India has been taking for many years past to meet these several needs. In 1864 it was decided that the State should undertake the irrigation works instead of entrusting them to privote Companies with guaranteed interest. In 1867 an Inspector-General of Irrigation was appointed, with Irrigation Secretaries in each Presidency. Every year a sum is assigned for irrigation works from the ordinary revenues of the year, which is not to be transferred to any other class of works. When this sum is spent additional works may be executed by loans. The Irrigation Department has also under its charge the vast system of embankments which in the zones of excessive rainfall are required to protect the country from disastrous inundations.

forms the first part of his labours. The ern coast of the Madras Presidency need of correct statistics has been strikingly shown by the results of the Census of 1871. In Bengal, says the LieutenantGovernor, the Census may almost be said to have revolutionized our ideas as to the amount of the population, as to its distribution over districts, races, and religions, and as to the incidence of taxation. The population of the provinces under the Government of Bengal had been set down in round numbers at forty-two millions. It turned out to be sixty-six millions. Of these nearly a third are Mahometans, and in certain districts the Mahometans are largely in excess of the Hindus. These districts do not include the ancient seats of Mahometan power, for at Dacca, Patna, and Murshidabad there are scarcely any Mahometans. The conclusion drawn from this fact is that the Bengal Mahometans are not descendants of the old conquerors, but of converts who were low-caste Hindus, and who embraced Islam to escape from their ignoble position under the Hindu system. It is a startling reflection that Bengal alone contains more Mahometans than any other country in the world. The taking of the Census was regarded with great suspicion by the lower classes among the natives. The general belief was that it was the forerunner of a new tax, but in some places it was supposed that the inhabitants were to be drafted to the hills, where coolies were wanted; and in Murshidabad a still more rigorous Malthusianism was attrib-exist between the need for irrigation and uted to the Government in the shape of a report that the authorities intended to blow the surplus population away from guns.

The connection usually supposed to

the preservation of forests is doubted by Dr. Brandis and other officers of experience. But even if the absolute rainfall is not diminished by the denudation of the The most important chapter perhaps in country, forests are of great indirect imthe Statement is that which deals with portance to the success of irrigation irrigation. A convenient map shows the schemes. Where the mountains are various degrees in which an artificial sup- bare, the surface drainage is extremely ply of water is necessary and important rapid, the irrigating rivers are flooded in in India. In the North-West there is a the wet season, and deprived of part of region, comprising all Sind and half the their supply during the dry season. Punjab, in which the annual rainfall is Where the forests are preserved, the surless than fifteen inches. Here without face drainage is gradual, the springs irrigation human life cannot be sustained. remain longer full, and the need for husSurrounding this arid zone there is a banding water becomes at the same time Northern dry zone from one to two hun- both less urgent and more easily supdred miles in width, in which the annual plied. Besides this, timber is in great rainfall is between fifteen and thirty inch- and increasing demand for fuel, for buildes. This district includes Delhi and ing, and for use on railways. Rich as Agra. A similar zone extends over the India naturally is in forests, the Governinterior of the peninsula south of Bom- ment has great difficulties to contend with bay. In both these cases also irrigation in preserving them. In the unreserved is essential to the existence of the popu- forests, which are under the management lation. The upper part of the valley of of local officers, the people possess or exthe Ganges, Central India, and the East-ercise rights of pasturage, of burning, and

of desultory and exhausting cultivation, improvident people," operate very harshly which annually cause great destruction of against the poor. In England the same timber. Jungle fires are constantly light- evil existed before the institution of ed either to clear a space for cultivation County Courts, and it eminently deserves or for the sake of the fresh grass which consideration whether some similar relief springs up afterwards. In the patches could not be applied in India. Sir George thus cleared a crop is raised for a single Campbell is also opposed to the present year without the aid either of the plough multiplication of appeals, as giving imor the spade. In the following year the mense advantage to the rich, and promotfield is abandoned and another patch of ing a litigious temper among a race which forest burnt down. A more costly mode has no need of external stimulus in that of agriculture cannot be imagined. To direction. The criminal interest of the gain a single crop millions of seedling year chiefly attaches to the North-West trees are destroyed, while for a consider- Provinces, where the police are engaged able distance round the bark of the trees in putting down hereditary thieving and is scorched, the wood exposed to the air, preventing infanticide. There are twenand the timber rendered hollow and use-ty-nine tribes who support themselves less. As yet forest legislation is extreme- during part of the year by systematic ly imperfect. By an Act passed in 1865 plunder, the gains being divided accordthe local Governments are empowered to ing to a fixed rule. By an Act passed in prohibit the destruction of trees, but the 1871 the Government is empowered to Act does not extend to Madras and Bom-remove a criminal tribe into a reformabay, and has not been largely applied even in Bengal. Existing forest rights and the difficulty of exercising effective supervision in the more remote districts present serious obstacles to any real improvement in this direction. Besides the plantations made for the supply of timber, large tracts of ground are now set apart in the hills for the growth of the cinchona plant. On the Nilgiri hills there are now more than two million and a half of plants, and it is found that the bark of the cultivated tree is very much richer in quinine than the bark of the wild tree. Large quantities are now exported, while in India itself the Government is doing its best to bring quinine within the reach of all classes. This is the more important since the progress of irrigation, necessary as it is to the support of the population, in many districts is found to increase the prevalence of fever.

tory settlement, where the members are provided with land at low rates, and encouraged to live an honest life. At the same time they are subjected to rigorous police supervision, and arrested if found beyond the limits of the settlement. Infanticide is being attacked by accurate registration of births and by frequent inspection of female infants. Any village in which the number of girls is less than 40 per cent. that of the whole number of children is proclaimed, and in the proclaimed villages the police supervision is exceptionally rigorous. The cost of the extra police required is paid by a small tax on each house. The number of girls surviving infancy is already decidedly on the increase.

From Once a Week.

A PIECE OF SPONGE.

As regards the administration of justice, the most notable feature is the number of civil suits. In Oudh they THERE is a regular fishing season for have doubled in four years; in the North- sponge in the Mediterranean, and at one Western Provinces the number during time it used nearly all to go to Smyrna, the year 1871-72 was the highest since and be sold as Turkey sponge; but now, the mutiny. This is held to be a sign of when the rocks of Syria and the Grecian great indebtedness and poverty. The Isles have been well dredged, and the suits "are generally for money on written collected sponge is dried, it is shipped promises to pay, and on very small sums. off at once for the European markets. ... The principal is never paid off, but We know principally by sight two kinds the interest is mercilessly exacted, and of sponge- -the fine, close, elastic; and the people become slaves to the money- the dark, open sponge, familiar to us as lenders." Sir George Campbell is dis-"honeycomb." To the uninitiated it posed to think that the "tendency to would seem that these were the produce uphold doctrines of bare law, and the lit- of different countries; but it is not so, eral enforcement of contracts alleged to for the two qualities are found growing Lave been entered into by ignorant and together, side by side, upon the same

rock, and are dredged with the same net. production, that we forget that it is The fishing season lasts for about four plentiful upon our own shores. The months, and is carried on in a rough, pieces found are certainly small, but none primitive fashion, but with tolerably the less they are sponge-and some of satisfactory results, though the thick, them of very fine texture, though utterly coarse, honeycomb sponge is far inferior worthless for economical purposes. There in commercial value to its close-grained, are few places of seaside resort where firm brother, the Turkey sponge par tiny pieces may not be picked up mingled excellence. Probably for want of re- with scraps of dried sea-weed and broken search, the supply of sponge is almost shells. Those who are fortunate enough confined to the Mediterranean and the to find the peculiarly shaped growth West Indies. Florida and the neigh- known as Neptune's glove will have bourhood of the Bahamas form the something well worthy of a place in the sponge hunter's ground, and it is proba- private museum of curiosities, good, bad, bly the case that the turtle may make his and indifferent. The collection of sponge . resting-place amongst the jelly-like grove in the Levant is dignified by the title of of the sponge. We get very little of the fishing, and partakes very much of the West Indian sponge, though, for it is nature of the process practised to obtain principally disposed of in the American pearls; inasmuch as divers go down in markets, excepting such portions as are some eight or ten fathoms water, taking too poor, rough, and inferior for the with them a triangular-shaped piece of trade; and that is shipped here, to be stone, to conquer the buoyancy. A rope bought up by the Jewish merchants, who is attached to this stone, and held by have the monopoly of this branch of companions in the boat. Once down, commerce here in England. To see the the diver's object is to wade rapidly to late contents of a case of sponge after the pieces of rock bearing the growing being moistened, one is tempted into sponge; this he rapidly tears off, till he comparisons with the Genii of the Ara- has as much as he can conveniently carry, bian Nights who escaped from the vessel or till his power of remaining below is that bore Solomon's seal-inasmuch as exhausted, when he pulls his rope, and the dry sponge is close, compact, and is rapidly hauled up into the boat. In tightly packed in; while the application some parts of the East, though, the divof water swells it out to a large bulk ing is not practised; but the sponges several times the original. We have are collected from shallower water, by pretty good samples of this in the well-means of a fork at the end of a long pole. puffed-out pieces offered for sale by In this way the pieces are forced or street vendors; and, by the way, strange stories of these pieces of sponge are told, as to their being refuse cleaned up for sale tales that have very little foundation in fact, for the pieces are for the most part new. We are so much accustomed to look upon sponge as a foreign

dragged from the rock, but very often at the expense of the sponge, which is thus made ragged and unsalable. A similar process is followed out in the West Indies, a long fork being used in place of the diving.

A BITTER principle has been separated | from white hellebore root by H. Weppen, and described by him under the name of Veratramarin. He has also prepared from the same source a new acid, called Jervic acid, and has studied a number of its salts.

fected in this way. Among his conclusions we note that he finds, in the Black Forest, that this affection is confined to granite soils, to the junction of granite and gneiss, and to Bunter sandstone.

Ir has been observed, in some localities, that the bones of horned cattle, fed on certain kinds of fodder, exhibit an unusual degree of brittleness. The subject has been lately investigated by Herr Nessler, who has analyzed the fodder and water consumed by cattle af

SIXTY curious statuettes in terra-cotta have just been placed in the Louvre, brought from Tanara, in Béotia, by MM. Dumont and Chaplain, as part of the fruits of their late voyage of artistic discovery in Greece. They vary in height from 2 1-2 inches to 10 inches, and all represent women or children.

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