ninsular, and other railways now enter the Nerbudda Valley,
so that the produce of most districts can be readily transported to
distant markets. A large enhancement of the land revenue has been
obtained by revisions of the settlement.

6. Details will be found in the _Central Provinces Gazetteer_ (1870).
The references are collected under the head 'Iron' in the index to
that work. Chapter VIII of _Ball's Economic Geology of India_ gives
full information concerning the iron mines of the Central Provinces
and all parts of India. That work forms Part III of the _Manual of
the Geology of India_.

7. The soil of the valley of the Nerbudda, and that of the Nerbudda
and Sagar territories generally, is formed for the most part of the
detritus of trap-rocks that everywhere covered the sandstone of the
Vindhya and Satpura ranges which run through these territories. This
basaltic detritus forms what is called the black cotton soil by the
English, for what reason I know not. [W. H. S.] The reason is that
cotton is very largely grown in the Nerbudda Valley, both on the
black soil and other soils. In Bundelkhand the black, friable soil,
often with a high proportion of organic matter, is called 'mar', and
is chiefly devoted to raising crops of wheat, gram, or chick-pea
(_Cicer arietinum_), linseed, and joar (_Holcus sorghum_). Cotton is
also sown in it, but not very generally. This black soil requires
little rain, and is fertile without manure. It absorbs water too
freely to be suitable for irrigation, and in most seasons does not
need it. The 'black cotton soil' is often known as _regur_, a
corruption of a Tamil word. 'The origin of _regur_ is a doubtful
question. . . . The dark coloration was attributed by earlier writers
to vegetable matter, and taken to indicate a large amount of humus in
the soil; more recent investigations make this doubtful, and in all
probability the colour is due to mineral constitution rather than to
the very scanty organic constituents of the soil,' It may possibly be
formed of 'wind-borne dust', like the loess plains of China (Oldham,
in _The Oxford Survey of the British Empire_, vol. ii, Asia, p. 9:
Oxford, 1914).

8. The land revenue has been largely increased, and the resources and
communications of the country have been greatly developed during the
last half-century. The formation of the Central Provinces as a
separate administration in 1861 secured for the Sagar and Nerbudda
territories the attent