RECLAMATION OF USAR AND REH SOILS.-Among the most important operations carried out by the Department of Agriculture in the North-Western Provinces is a continuation of the experiments with the view of reclaiming usar land. While a part of the land has been left to be worked by the Irrigation Department, four plots have been retained under the control of the Agricultural Department. The Juhi plot, measuring 102 acres, has now, it appears, been under observation for eight years. It was originally a plot of bare usar land within two miles of Cawnpore, and was acquired at a price of one rupee per acre, including which it has cost altogether Rs. 2,179 up to date. It has been fenced with posts and pillars and ditches and planted with trees, which have been regularly watered. The theory of the experiment was that by means of simple enclosure for five or six years the soil would be so improved that an annual income from the sale of grass of Rs. 100 from the 100 acres would be obtained. It was also hoped that babul and other hardy trees would eventually spring up, and that in time a fuel and fodder reserve would be formed at but little cost. The results are said to have been disappointing. Enclosure has unquestionably induced a vigorous growth of grass, and the grasses are slowly improving in quality. But the staple growth is still the common usar grass, which dies down after the rains, and which, though largely eaten by cattle, is not nourishing. As to trees, numerous sowings have been tried, but they have for the most part ended in failure, and those plants which have struggled into existence are stunted and of slow growth. During the past year this plot yielded a small rent of Rs. 50 on a part of the area which was let to a grazier at the end of the rains. It is now proposed to try cutting the grass and stacking it for sale in December and January. Whether or not the experiment prove eventually remunerative, it would be a mistake to abandon it as yet. The annual expenditure is very trifling, and it is obviously very desirable for scientific purposes that changes in the character of soil regarded as unculturable, resulting from simple enclosure, should continue to be observed. The Amraman plot, consisting of 52 acres, adjoins Juhi, and was also taken up eight years ago. It was fenced in and originally treated in the same way as Juhi, but in 1885 the Assistant Director was allowed to try the experiment of manuring and deep ploughing. This involved an expenditure of Rs. 8,558, and brought in an income of Rs. 6,575 from different sources up to the 30th September, 1890, leaving deficit of Rs. 1,983. But 35 acres have been reclaimed, of which 25 acres are let to tenants for Rs. 196 a year, and 10 acres are

still under direct management. Against the difference of Rs. 1,983 are, however, to be set off the value of the improved plot, of the wire fencing, and of the substantial farm buildings. The Assistant Director also argues, and with force, that the total expenditure properly includes charges incurred in the first three years in the attempt to form a fuel and fodder reserve. The plot is to be sold as soon as a pending question as to the future supply of canal water to the plot has been settled. But the largest measure of success as yet has been achieved at Cherat in the Alighur District. Here an usar plot covering 242 acres was originally maintained as a fuel and fodder reserve, and numerous tree-planting experiments were tried. It was subsequently divided into two portions, one of which has been kept under grass and the other is being brought under cultivation by manuring and deep ploughing. The fuel and fodder experiment has cost Rs. 3,941, and the tillage reclamation experiment Rs. 4,453. Already about 20 acres have been successfully brought under the plough, and during the present rainy season 30 or 40 acres more will be broken up. A herd of ctatle has been bought and is kept to ensure a sufficiency of manure, and it is said to be likely to do more than pay its way by the sale of milk and butter and of young stock. The neighbouring zemindars at one time scoffed at the idea that the usar land could ever be made to yield a blade of corn. The reclaimed fields can now, it is said, be let for Rs. 4 and 5 the full bigah, and the farm has often been visited by persons interested in the experiment. The Director of Agriculture considers this one of the most important and hopeful enquiries the Department has in hand. The Cherat usar plot is situated in a tract infested with reh, and under the influence of a raised water level (due in all probability to the canal) and a miserable system of cultivation, reh is steadily spreading in the neighbourhood. Indeed, this Cherat plot itself was, when the Department took it over, thick in many places with a saline deposit. If by means of deep ploughing and manure the salts can be kept down, the result will only prove the truth of the view which Mr. Medlicott, a late head of the Geological Survey, expressed at the Reh Conference of 1878 that deep cultivation, by loosening the subsoil, enables the salts when in solution to escape to the underground waters. The progress of reh is the most serious agricultural danger of the canal districts of the North-. Western Provinces, and any light that may be thrown on the problem must obviously be regarded as of the utmost importance.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TEAK TREE.-There is no need for me to say anything about my family: the public know the characteristics and the worth of the order to which I belong. Why! if it had not been for the services my ancestors have rendered to man, I think I should be quite safe in being of the opinion that civilisation would not have advanced to the stage it has reached. Just imagine the world without its boats and yachts, its ships of merchandise and of war! True, other trees like the oak would answer as well; but the oak, although a useful and very sturdy fellow, is so scarce, and covers such a narrow range, comparatively speaking, while we teak trees are a prolific family and are infinitely more useful. We are sought for all over the world. I dare say, you, my reader, are now reading this at a teak table, seated on a teak chair, and after your day's work is done, you will probably drive home in a carriage in which a great deal of teak has been used, ascend a flight of teak-wood stairs, and retire to rest on a teak-wood cot. You see, we are so smooth-grained and take so kindly to the attentions of the artisan, and resist the attacks of insects so well, that our value is very great indeed. It would be throwing words away to enumerate our good qualities; they will be gladly admitted by all right thinking people, even those prejudiced folk with a country bias. But alas! there are others who, while showing their appreciation of our utility, still look upon us as mere money; they are mercenary creatures, who think of nothing but rupees. They have no affection for us; do not care what our up-bringing is; do not enquire what our grand proportions would be under proper training and encouragement; have not the slightest interest in the disabilities under which we suffer, and care not whether our race is likely to continue or die out in the hard struggle for existence. The present alone occupies them, and if they can sell us to fill their pockets it is all they wish. Their motto apparently is :-" After me the deluge.

And so it comes about that I, from my retirement, am roused to indignant action and seek to place before the public the evils we undergo, and to suggest and pray for some amelioration of our woes. To introduce myself more particularly I may say that I grow in the forests of Travancore, some 15 to 20 miles south-west of Permaad. Permaad, as every one knows or ought to know, is the sanitarium of Travancore, and I mention this because, if the relation of my troubles should touch the heart of some influential 'big-wig who holds in his hands the keys of power, he can easily, by stepping not much out of his way, satisfy himself that what I here assert is true in every detail. When I was sufficiently deve

loped I was conscious of being a fine, straight-limbed, vigorous sapling. This was some 55 to 60 years ago only, and, strange to tell, I find myself now in a prematurely aged condition, a brokenhearted, bent old fellow, affording spectators a remarkable specimen of arrested development. Every breeze that blows brings on a fit of groaning which threatens to put an end to an enfeebled and battered existence. If my enemies would but even leave me alone, and allow nature to work her wondrous care, I should not thus complain; for although I am too old and broken to expect that hope will brighten days to come, yet memory gilds some days of the past, and at times I am not at all unhappy. Please pardon my garrulity; it is the fault and the solace of age. We trees are a long-lived people, and my contemporaries, some few of them, are in the prime and vigour of life. Thirty years ago I was very proud of my upright stem with its promise of massive strength, my large fan-like foliage, and my symmetrical branches. In the months of April and May my blossom would appear, and my reflection in a neighbouring stream gave me always unmingled satisfaction, and caused a glow of pride to pervade my entire frame. Although the flowers of our order are unscented and unobtrusive in colour, and notwithstanding that our family is indebted to the wind for fertilisation, still the bees would linger about us, and their pleasant hum was very soothing in the midday stillness of the forest. In the mornings quite a chorus of bird music, the notes of the Malabar thrush being especially distinct, would usher in the sun, and at night, bid him a jocund farewell. The sun was a friend in those days, and snugly sheltered amidst trees of all kinds, I used to welcome his warm rays, as they stole through the dense foliage of the giants overhead to kiss me. Besides the birds and the bees, there would often roam by us, and rub his shoulders against us, and twine his trunk lovingly about us the lordly elephant, with his tusks which gleamed strangely white in the pillarred gloom. The white-buskined bison would startle us occasionally by madly careering, in herds of fifteen to twenty, through the undergrowth, while the Nilgiri langur would make the hills echo with his peculiar booming call.

They were pleasant days indeed; but the glory has departed; birds, beasts, monkeys, comrades, the cool damp atmosphere, all are gone! I never knew the monsoons to fail in those days. I was in blissful ignorance of partial droughts, of the burning heat of the sun; of the loss of soil above my roots; of irritating and plebeian thatch grass, of the dry water-course, of the cutting wind, of the burns and smoke of devastating fires; and of the murder and sud

den death which has overtaken thousands of my kindred. Till I was 35 years old I never saw a human being; but before I was 40 they made more frequent incursions into our domains. I used to hear of course of their depredations and iniquities; we trees have a language of our own and whisper our secrets to one another, and although most mortals are too gross to understand us, to one who loves us and studies our ways we make ourselves quite intelligible. I heard and forgot, till one day a party of men encamped close to the stream near which I stand (now only a rivulet), and next day commenced their diabolical operations. It is necessary for me to tell you that the stream on the left bank of which I stand runs east and west, and my position was half way down the valley that it drains. First of all, then, there was a great deal of talking and shouting, and then the men settled to work. For days there was no noise of falling trees, only the repeated and monotonous cut, cut, cutting of the axe. I noticed with a tremor of delight that these hard-hearted wretches spared the more aristocratic trees amongst us, such as we teak, the members of the handsome rosewood family, the delicate and blue-blooded sandal, and the benteak, a connection by adoption of our family. It was subsequently I learnt that the Maharaja had prohibited our being felled; but surely it is a short-sighted policy to keep us from being cut down and yet allow all that is sacred to us, all that makes life worth living to go, and thus to deprive us of the environment that favours our full development. The men passed us aristocratically by and went on cutting higher and higher. When felling a forest, to save labour, the men commence at the bottom of a hill or a valley, and cut half through the trees, and, leaving them standing, proceed higher up the hill with every tree. There was another day of shouting and howling, and coo-eeing, and then a number of axes were employed felling a mighty Thani tree. I heard him groan,

I saw him far above me, waver, totter, then with a scream and a thundering crash he fell headlong to ruin, and eventual combustion. A million lights danced in my eyes, a thousand thunders deafened my ears, and then-I lost consciousness. Better that I should have died in that grand carnage, better a sudden wrench and blank nothingness than a lifetime of repeated cruelty and ill treatment, with a crippled and sickly existence. But it was not to be, and when I recovered sufficiently to realize the enormity of my misfortunes it resulted in such a shock to my entire system that I have been more or less utterly useless ever since. Just previous to the falling of the Thani tree I was in vigorous and lusty life; two minutes later my spine was injured for ever, a