CHAPTER IX

AGRICULTURE AND REVENUE

THE diverse character of Indian geographical features and
climate admits of most of the agricultural produce of both
temperate and tropical zones. In the north of India the
climate is dry, and the long winters are cold. On the
Himalayas it is both cold and moist; in the low Himalayan
 valleys it is temperate and occasionally tropical ;
and in Southern India and Ceylon we find all the usual
tropical conditions—a heavy rainfall at periodic intervals,
and a moist, hot atmosphere.
Agriculture is the pursuit of about 75 per cent. of the
Indian population, and the changes of season and variations
of rainfall affect the conditions of life so closely and so
seriously that in no country in the world are the meteorologic
 variations so anxiously watched, and the promises of
the future so minutely balanced as in India. When we
leave the peninsula area and pass into the rainless
districts on the west and north, where irrigation is the
basis of crop production, we find much less anxiety about
weather conditions. There the worst effects of famine
are unknown, and the people live in contented security
from this most dreaded of all visitations, Scarcity may
prevail from time to time, but the gaunt spectre of actual
starvation does not trouble them.
In Northern India the cold weather is usually reckoned
to last from October to April, and during that period the
temperature occasionally falls: below freezing point at
night. Excepting in December, when rain is expected
for a week or two, the sky is usually clear, and the sun is
hot towards the middle of the day. Bright sunshine is
the usual condition of the weather from one day to
another during the cold weather months. It is then that

are