Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 1).djvu/118

98 which has smitten the Panjab more severely than any other province, appeared in 1896, and its effect was seen in the lower rate of expansion between 1891 and 1901. Notwithstanding great extensions of irrigation and cultivation in the Rechna r Doab the numbers declined

Fig. 28. Map showing increase and decrease of population.

by 2 p.c. between 1901 and 191 1. In the ten years from 1901 to 1910 in the British districts alone over two million people died of plague and the death-rate was raised to 12 p.c. above the normal. It actually exceeded the birth-rate by 2 p.c. Of the total deaths in the decade nearly one in four was due to plague.