our American wheat. Having been
ordered by the United States government to report on the wheat growing
of India, I made this a special object of investigation and study, and
in December, 1882, sent a report to the government in Washington which
is our first reliable information on that subject; it elicited a great
deal of attention, and was a source of genuine surprise in this country.
I submit a few extracts from this report:

The annual wheat production of India now reaches two hundred and forty
million bushels, of which two hundred million may be exported, while
the natives make their bread from other kinds of grain. The total area
devoted to wheat each year is now a little over twenty million acres,
and the best average yield is thirteen and one-half bushels per acre.
Wheat growing is now receiving the special attention of the general
and local governments, and important works are being made and
projected for an extensive system of canal irrigation. One of these,
the Sirhind canal in the Punjab, has just been completed; it was built
mainly by prison labor, is five hundred and two miles long, and will
irrigate seven hundred and eighty thousand acres through two thousand
five hundred miles of minor channels.

The wheat is sown in the autumn and harvested in March or April; it
is usually sown in drills or rows, weeded like garden stuff, and in
quantities not much larger than garden patches in the United States.
The agricultural population numbers nearly two hundred millions; it is
the aggregate of innumerable little units which, in agriculture, as in
everything else in India, brings the country into importance; and this
fact is so closely interwoven with the whole social, industrial and
legal network of India, that it bears a strong influence even upon the
future question of Indian _versus_ American wheat.

[Illustration: PLOWING IN INDIA.]

The Indian agriculturist,--"Ryot,"--can in no sense be compared to the
American farmer, but rather to the late serf of Russia. He is a tenant
on hard conditions, and is by custom and bigotry almost a fixture on
the spot of land where he was born; his farming is done on a very
small scale and according to old methods, to which he clings with
religious veneration; his wants are very few, and he endures poverty
and even hunger with patience; he cultivates his patch of five to
fifteen acres on shares for the landed proprieto