Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/43

 or subdivisions of the Zodiac. The twelve Nakhats which fill the critical period between the 23rd of May and the 4th of November, are the most important for the cultivator, and indicate good or evil influence with regard to sowings, harvestings, and the seasonableness of the rainfall. The obstacles to progress caused by superstition and the belief in omens and divinations will, it is hoped, give way before rural education, especially if it is free and compulsory. But the troubles of the cultivator arising from more material causes, form the main difBculty in the case : his want of capital for irrigation and manure, his bondage to the moneylender, the grievous mortality among the plough-cattle. As regards this last point, Mr. Hume feelingly describes the tragedy of these faithful and beautiful friends of man : " Over a great portion of the Empire, the mass of the catde are starved for six weeks every year. The hot winds roar, every green thing has disappeared, no hot weather forage is grown, the last year's fodder has generally been consumed in keeping the well-bullocks on their legs during the irrigation of the spring crops, and all the husband-man can do is just to keep his poor brutes alive on the chopped leaves of the few trees and shrubs he has access to, the roots of grass and herbs that he digs out of the edges of fields, and the like. In good years he just succeeds ; in bad years the weakly ones die of starvation. But then come the rains. Within the week, as though by magic, the burning sands are carpeted with rank luscious herbage, the cattle will eat and overeat, and millions die of one form or other of cattle disease, springing out of this starvation, followed by sudden repletion with rank, juicy, immature herbage." Mr. Hume estimated the average annual loss of cattle in India by preventible cattle disease at fully ten million beasts, roughly valued at ;£7,500,000. "And be it noted that it is not only the