able distance of the
catchment area on the sides, and especially at the back, of the tanks
should be honeycombed with pits, as the water, which is often largely lost
from falling in heavy deluges, would thus percolate into the ground, and
so find its way into the bed of the tank by degrees. I may mention that a
great effect has been produced in the case of a tank on one of my coffee
estates by thus digging pits to catch water that would otherwise run
directly down into the tank, to be largely lost by the overflow during
heavy rains, and a similar effect has been produced on the property of a
neighbour. In fact, the effect produced by such pits on the supply of
water in tanks is far greater than one could have imagined to be possible,
and I may therefore, in passing, call particular attention to the
advisability of such pits being made near tanks used for agricultural
purposes. On the margins of the tanks, and in parts of the bed where
sufficient soil exists, trees should be planted, with the view of
diminishing evaporation from the surface of the water.

When the railway is completed, soil might easily be brought into the
field oil trucks, and the pits dug for trees should be filled with it. The
planting of trees in and around the field would certainly be beneficial in
many obvious ways, and would improve the climate and probably affect, not
perhaps the amount, but the distribution of the rainfall. I would suggest
that if earth closets were used by the people, and the used earth spread
around the trees, there would be a great improvement in their growth. This
would at once improve the sanitation of the field and beautify it at the
same time.

The reader has now probably learned enough of this rising settlement,[29]
and I have only to add that on the day following I returned to Bangalore,
after having had a most pleasant and interesting time of it with my
friends on the Kolar field.

I next pass to a brief mention of the other auriferous tracts in Mysore,
which were surveyed in 1887 by Mr. R. Bruce Foote, Superintendent of the
Geological Survey of India, who, in connection with his investigations
between February 2nd and May 7th of that year, travelled no less than
1,300 miles in Mysore in marching and field work. A full report of his
work appears in the "Selections,"[30] and this is accompanied by a map in
which Mr. Foote has sketched out the distribution of the auriferous rocks.
In the "Selections" alluded to there,