India in 1887 as seen by Robert Wallace / [Robert Wallace].

  • Robert Wallace
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: India in 1887 as seen by Robert Wallace / [Robert Wallace]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    519/550 page 433
    indigo planters in Behar, by placing in the care of a num- ber of men who were, according to his personal knowledge, agreeable, a small herd of say 20 or 30 heifers accompanied by a good bull. The cost to Government would be perhaps Rs. 1000 in each instance. The original stock and also the heifer calves would remain the property of Government, the male calves going to defray expenses and yield profit or lemunciation for the trouble of management. In this way, at a small cost, good cattle could be distributed through many parts of the country. This proposal involves simply an extension of a common practice in India. The owner of a cow frequently lets it out or makes it over to a cow-herd, who pays all expenses and shares the profit on the calf with the original owner. The way is clear, and it only wants a department with the necessary knowledge to carry the suggestions into effect. Efforts to introduce new crops by the distribution of seeds have been made from time to time in a sort of desultory way, and in some parts with success. In the work of an Agriculture Department this branch holds out w ell-grounded hopes of extensive and substantial improve- ment, but it is work which demands special experience, and can only be successfully carried out in conjunction with experimental stations, either belonging to Government or enterprising natives. There are two fields of operation, which would directly come under this branch of the Department, which are absolutely untrodden in India, and which, I believe, will ultimately become valuable—(1), the improvement of crops by the selection of the best developed seeds, as has been so successfully practised by Hallett in the case of nearly all our common grains ; and (2), the hybridizing of such a crop as wheat by the method followed by Carter & Co., High Holborn. By these practices the size and quality of the grain can be wonderfully enlarged and the yield of crop increased. One conspicuous ad van- tabe is that by these means in a given region the common
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