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 the husbandman: for a copious sediment of rich alluvial earth is deposited on the lately cropped soil,which requires only to be stirred and sprinkled with grain to return fruit, some thirty, some sixty and some a hundred fold. The earth now teems with vegetation; the arid soil becomes a jungle; the growth of plants may almost be watched with the naked eye; and tender shoots run up into stems sixty or eighty feet in height in one season. Animal life is equally prolific; the soil is literally encrusted with toads and frogs and creeping things of every description, and the noise of insects is quite deafening.

The rains are more and more scanty and irregular towards the north-west. In the Punjaub very little falls during the hot season, and beyond the main chain of the Himalayah the monsoon is unknown.

8. THE COLD WEATHER.—About the middle of September the rains begin to intermit; about the 1st of October there is only an occasional shower; about the middle of October the monsoon generally changes, often with as much violence as it set in with;the wind settles in the north-east; and the weather becomes calm, cool and clear. By the 1st of November the temperature is very congenial, and till the middle or end of March no climate in the world could surpass it, especially in the north-western provinces. The