The following is the substance of ti lecture upon Irrigation in the Pa given by Mr. H. Middleton at the meeting of the Union Charch Literary and Social Goild on March 8. The lectorer said The knowledge he possessed of irrigation in the Panjab was obtained at firet hand when he was a member of the Indian Public Works Department and in the railway service. Unlike ti Grand Canal of China the Papj waterways were designed mainly with the object of bringing " large and perennial water supply to immense tracts of waste land. The Grand Canal and its off-shoots were used mainly ass means of communication and transport through country blessed with s plentiful rain supply. In the Punjab, before the canals were built, there were vast tracts of sandy waste on which not bit but ® species of cactas grew, on account of the very meagre rainfall Five large rivers ran tbroagh the Panjab, hence the name, puni meaning "five" and ab "waters." The tract of land enclosed between each two rivers was called doab, After the effects of the Mutiny had wabsided the Government of India began seriously to consider the task of irrigating these doabs and transforming them into fertile areas, The financial problem was most difficalt, as the Punjab was theo, po haps, the poorest province in India and the work would cost many millions of pounds sterling. The Government of India, however, had the courage and wisdom to borrow the money, notwithstanding the heavy amount of interest it bad to pay daring the long period in mich the works were ander construction, and before the effect of irrigation bad made itself manifest. That the policy adopted hed justified itself was shown by the fact that the Panjab, formerly one of the poorest, was now one of the richest provinces of the Indian Empire, The weekly edition of "The Times" of November 25, 1910, gave the following figures of the total wheat production of the countries named 1909. 1910. qrs. are. Indi 35,520,000 44,638,000 United States 90,608,000 83,750,000) ba Canada.,,......20,843,000 15,375,000
The increase of about 25 per cent in the Indian output was largely due to canals in the Panjab, in which province most of the wheat is grown.
'A most careful and elaborate survey, and the collection of data from the supplic made in the first instance, te the tracts to be irrigated. d villages bad be built all over the area served by canal, and s peasant population hed to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.