Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c20.28

c20.28

My own experience agrees entirely with the neat, accurate and comprehensive view that Colonel Wilks has given of the Husbandry of Mysoor.¹¹ I have seen from Cape Comorin to the Gulf of Kutch details of the most laborious cultivation, of the collection of manure, of grains sown for fodder, of grain sown promiscuously for the same purpose; of an attention to the change of seed, of fallows, and rotation of crops. The rotation may sometimes be imperfectly followed; but it is a system understood and acted upon throughout India, with more or less skill and intelligence. All the changes however which are necessary for preserving the fertility of land in Europe, may not be equally essential to the fecundity of soil, under a climate like that of India. In America, virgin or new land continues for many years to produce crop after crop, without the assistance of manure. In Lithuania there is a regular succession of the same crops: even in Britain in the neighbourhood of towns, where there is a perpetual command of manure, the regular rotation is frequently neglected without impoverishing the land. In the West Indies, where there is no cultivation but the sugar cane, the same crop is constantly produced.