Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/286

226 both of excess and defect, as will appear from the following comparison:—

The ascertained number of inhabited villages in thana Nanglia and Bhawara is greater, and in thanas Daulatbazar, Culna, and Jehanabad less, than the official number of villages. The excess in the two former may be attributed to the extension of cultivation in the Beerbhoom and Tirhoot districts, leading to the gradual formation of new villages. The causes of deficiency in the three latter I had not the means of satisfactorily investigating, but I have met with individual instances of the abandonment of villages which were popularly ascribed to pestilence, with others caused by the encroachments of the neighbouring river, with others that were attributed to disagreement with European settlers, and with others that were alleged to have arisen from the quarrels of adjoining zemindars leading to excessive exactions from the cultivators.

Second.—The average number of families in each village is an evidence and measure of a comparatively dense or sparse population. The following are the results in the different thanas:—

The extremes are Culna and Jehanabad, the former a populous thana of a very populous district, and the latter a thana of a district not remarkable for the scantiness, but for the dispersion of its population. Intermediate degrees of social aggregation are found in the other three thanas. Compared with the other Bengal districts Beerbhoom is thinly peopled, but it will be observed that the average number of families in each village in thana Nanglia of that district, although the lowest of the Bengal averages, is greater than the highest of the Behar averages, tending to show the