The need for development in directions other than purely chemical was soon felt. In 1901, Dr. E. J. Butler was appointed Imperial Mycologist or, as the appointment was then designated, Imperial Cryptogamic Botanist and, in 1903, the late Mr. Maxwell Lefroy was appointed Imperial Entomologist.

MISSION OF 1901.

16. The recommendations of the Famine Commission of 1880, as stated in the report of the last of its successors, the THE FAMINE COM- Famine Commission of 1901, "powerfully influenced for good agrarian and administrative reform in India for the next twenty years. The next great advance was made as the result of the Report of the Commission of 1901 which recommended that the expert staff of the agricultural departments in all provinces should be strengthened and that mutual credit associations on the lines of the German co-operative credit societies should be introduced. The Commission found that "the steady application to agricultural problems of expert research is the crying necessity of the time" but reinforced this with the warning that "security of the harvest only postpones the pressure of the population on the soil; it is prudence and knowledge and the practice of thrift alone which will relieve it." In considering the problem of indebtedness, it recommended further legislation on the lines of the new Punjab Alienation of Land Act to restrict the transfer of land; otherwise "our moderate survey rates, intended to benefit the cultivator, will only benefit land speculators, who will, as occupants, pay the low rates to Government and grind down their sub-tenants under a hideous system of rack-renting."

17. The recommendations of the Famine Commission of 1901 were speedily translated into action by Lord Curzon's THE POSITION IN Government. Effect was given to those relating to 1905. co-operative credit by the Co-operative Credit Societies Act of 1904. Those relating to agricultural problems led to the great expansion of the Imperial and provincial departments of agriculture which dates from 1905. The position on the eve of this expansion may be summed up as follows. Whilst there was evidence of keen desire on the part of the provincial agricultural departments to embark on schemes of agricultural research and improvement, developments in this direction were somewhat hampered by the limitations imposed by the policy of the Government of India in insisting upon statistical and economic investigations as an essential preliminary to any schemes of agricultural improvement. In their review of the Report of the Famine Commission of 1880, the Government of India had placed definitely in the forefront of the duties of an agricultural department, the collection and study of vital, economic and agricultural facts and conditions with a view to rendering the information thus obtained of practical use. They had also enjoined on agricultural departments the duty of organising famine relief. The gist of their orders was, in fact, that scientific enquiry and research in the laboratory and in the field on agricultural matters must be deferred until the statistical enquiries were complete

and until the facts so obtained had been analysed for the purpose of securing the greatest possible measure of protection against famine. In short, the Government of India insisted that the thorough adaptation of the existing revenue systems to agricultural facts and conditions should take precedence of agricultural experiments. The absence of reliable knowledge of existing conditions had been borne in upon the Government of India by the breakdown of their machinery when faced by recurrent periods of famine and scarcity and they had wisely decided to set their house in order in this respect before launching out in the new direction of agricultural research and experiment. The grim spectre of famine was before them and it was to combat this that all their plans and policies were directed.

Their instructions were loyally carried out by the provinces but this did not prevent spasmodic efforts towards agricultural improvement. The awakening of interest in agricultural science in England had reacted on India and there were indications of a keenness for agricultural research in this country before the facilities for giving practical effect to it became available. We make no apology for passing under rapid review the efforts at agricultural advance which were made in the different provinces before 1905. Such a review is of interest if only as showing how little of permanent value can be accomplished by enthusiasm which lacks the solid basis of a definite policy and an efficient organisation. The lesson is not without its moral to-day.

AGRICULTURE IN

THE PROVINCES PRIOR

TO 1905.

(1) BOMBAY.

18. To Bombay must be assigned the credit of priority in attempts at agricultural improvement. Cotton, as the most important crop of the presidency and one of special interest to the East India Company, first attracted attention and, as early as 1788, the Directors of the Company urged that encouragement should be given to its production and improvement, but the experiments to this end which were carried out during the next hundred years had little effect on the bulk of the crop. In 1839, the Court of Directors sent out twelve American planters to teach the local cultivators how to grow and clean cotton. Three of these were allotted to Bombay and it is only in the Dharwar district of that presidency that there has been any survival of their work in India. In Bombay, as elsewhere, the tendency of the earlier workers on agriculture was to aim at the improvement of particular crops by the introduction of exotic varieties rather than to attempt the improvement of the system of agriculture in general. Spasmodic and unsystematic efforts of this character led nowhere and it was not until the formation of an agricultural department in 1883 with the late Mr. E. C. Ozanne as Director that any real advance was made. In accordance with the policy of the Government of India which has been described in preceding paragraphs, his duties, for the first few years after his appointment, were mainly statistical and connected with land revenue assessments, but a superintendent of experimental farms was appointed in 1890 and thereafter progress was rapid. The first holder of the new appointment was the late Dr. Mollison, afterwards Inspector

General of Agriculture in India, and it was not long before he succeeded in training what, for that period, was a highly efficient subordinate staff.

In Bombay, as in some other provinces, considerable attention was devoted to agricultural education even before the formation of a separate department of agriculture. The necessity of improving Indian agriculture by the adoption of scientific methods came under the consideration of the Government after the famine of 1876-77 and it was decided that steps should be taken to train a number of Indians in scientific agriculture and an agricultural class for this purpose was opened at the College of Science at Poona in 1879. As no agricultural department then existed, the men from this class were drafted into the Revenue Department. The course was made a practical one in 1880, when a farm was attached to the class. The recommendation of the Famine Commission of 1880 that provincial agricultural departments should be created throughout India led to recognition of the necessity for men with higher agricultural training than the class provided and a committee appointed to consider the form this training should take recommended the institution of a degree in agriculture at the Bombay University. It was not, however, until 1890 that a diploma in agriculture was instituted by the university and agriculture first received university recognition in India. The diploma was granted to candidates who had successfully passed through a three years' course at the College of Science or the Baroda College. This course underwent many vicissitudes. The diploma conferred few privileges as regards admission to government service. For this reason, it became unpopular and, in 1895, there were no applicants for admission to the college of Science. In 1899, it was replaced by a course in which special stress was laid on practical agriculture and which led to the diploma of Licentiate in Agriculture. The Poona Agricultural College was opened in 1905, and in 1908 the degree of B.Ag. was instituted.

19. A practical interest in agriculture in Madras was awakened as early as 1863 by the presentation to his Council (ii) MADRAS. of a note by the Governor, Sir William Denison, in which he drew attention to "the continuous cropping, the deficiency of manure and its consumption as fuel, the defective implements, the lack of trees, the poor cattle and the want of accurate knowledge and statistics." The Government of Madras not unwisely considered that irrigation, communications, education, cheap justice and careful assessments were the chief means of stimulating agriculture, but they allowed some virtue to implements. An order was, therefore, placed in England, for "a steam plough, steam harrows and cultivators, seed drills, horse hoes, threshing machines and winnowers, chaff cutters and water lifts." To find employment for this elaborate consignment, 350 acres of land at Saidapet, some five miles from Madras, which had lapsed to Government, were entrusted in 1864 to a committee of amateur enthusiasts which undertook to conduct a full trial and exhibition of the agricultural implements received from England, a full trial of

artificial manures and an exhibition to the people of the improved зystem of agriculture. The committee laboured heroically at its great task until 1871 by which time it may be assumed that its patience and the implements were worn out. Its failure to accomplish anything of value is easily explained. No preliminary investigation of local conditions had been made, no staff for experimental or propaganda work had been trained. The soil at Saidapet was not even typical of any large or important area of the presidency. It was merely assumed that what had proved successful in the West would be equally successful in the East. When the committee abandoned its self-imposed task, the farm passed under official control and the next decade was occupied in discussions of policy and in an attempt to work out a scheme of agricultural education. "A complete and high class public agricultural college was established at Saidapet in 1876. In 1884, the control of the college was transferred entirely from the Board of Revenue to the Director of Public Instruction with whom it remained until the reorganisation of the Agricultural Department in 1905-06, and, in 1885, except for the small portion which remained attached to the college, the farm was abolished. Although, after 1885, the presidency nominally possessed an agricultural department of which a Member of the Board of Revenue, the Commissioner of Revenue Settlement, Land Records and Agriculture, was the head, its functions, as in Bombay, were for long restricted to statistical and economic enquiries. The history of Madras agriculture from 1863 until towards the end of the century falls into three periods. The first witnessed the ascendancy of the idea of a model farm worked on western methods, the second was dominated by a barren discussion on agricultural education and, in the third, agricultural effort was blighted by the insistence on the importance of statistics. None the less, in spite of the difficulties under which they laboured, the work done by Mr. W. R. Robertson during his long tenure of office, as Principal of the college and Superintendent of the experimental station at Saidapet, and subsequently by Mr. C. A. Benson, as Deputy Director of Agriculture, left its mark on the development of the department after the reorganisation of 1905. In that development, former students of the Saidapet College played no inconsiderable part.

Theory and academic discussion had, however, to yield to the forces of nature when the staple crops of Madras were attacked by disease. From 1895 to 1897, the area under sugarcane in the Godavari district steadily declined owing to the ravages of "red rot"; in 1898, complaints were received from the Madras Chamber of Commerce of the deterioration of groundnuts: in 1903 and 1904, the diseases of pepper attracted attention. Natural causes thus forced the hands of Government and compelled them to invoke the aid of science. Dr. Barber was engaged as Economic Botanist in 1898 and, in 1901, was allowed to lease land in Godavari for experiments directed to the discovery of disease resistant varieties of cane; foreign seeds of groundnut were imported and distributed through Collectors to selected cultivators; a farm was opened on the west coast for the investigation of diseases of pepper. In the light of the policy thus inaugurated, the claims of cotton and other fibres

could not be ignored and, in 1901, two farms were opened for the study of cotton, one at Bellary and the other in Tinnevelly, and another for agaves in the Anantapur district. In 1904, a farm for exotic irrigated cotton was opened at Hagari in the Bellary district. A foundation was thus laid on which it was easy to superimpose further development when the new era of agricultural advance commenced in 1905.

(iii) THE UNITED PROVINCES.

20. The first steps towards the formation of an agricultural department in what are now the United Provinces were taken in 1875 when Sir John Strachey, the Lieutenant Governor, obtained sanction to the creation of a temporary appointment of Director of Agriculture and Commerce for five years, an appointment which ultimately became permanent and the first holder of which was Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edward Buck. The instructions to the Director of Agriculture were "to establish and prove to Indian agriculturists the advantages to be gained from small improvements such as they are able with the means at their disposal to carry out, and to make experiments as to staples and industries which it may be possible to introduce, if new, or to familiarise and improve if already existing in the country." Special attention was devoted to sericulture, the improvement of indigenous fibres and the manufacture of a finer grade of tobacco. There were already in existence three model farms which had been managed by district officers and these were taken over by the new department. A silk farm was opened in the Dehra Dun district, a tobacco farm at Ghazipur and a fruit farm in the Kumaon Hills. The farm at Cawnpore which was to be the nucleus of the department's development was started on rented land in 1881. One of the model farms mentioned above had been at Cawnpore and tradition ascribes its establishment to the interest displayed in indigo cultivation by one of the earliest Collectors of the district. Tobacco and sericulture proved a failure but the well established fruit and potato trade of the province owes its origin to the work on the Kumaon farm.

It is interesting to note that arboriculture was one of the branches of work entrusted to the department. Arrangements were made for providing nurseries for district arboriculture and for planting road-side trees. The work has been systematically carried on to the present day and the fine avenues of the province testify to the efficiency of the operations. In the early eighties, attention was directed to the improvement of existing wells and the construction of new ones, a branch of work in which the department has always been prominent. The first results were not satisfactory and little progress was made until it was realised that the main obstacle to the successful construction of wells by zamindars and others was the uncertainty of finding a sufficient supply of water without the information obtained from a preliminary boring. When this fact was appreciated, a small boring staff was appointed which has gradually expanded to its present dimensions.

Other problems with which the department concerned itself were cattle breeding, the reclamation of alkali (usar) and of ravine lands, experiments in breeding for staple in cotton and the improvement of sugarcane