106 RI'IW$ OP BOOKS was through such a competent staff that the material was eelleered. The staff was supplied with forms to be filled up and with careful instructions concerning the method of .conducting their investigations (see Appendix). The first chapter is concerned with a description of the district and its inhabitants. It shows that Mr. Jsck's knowledge of the people was both dc?p and sympathetic, and he has written interestingly on this subject. I shall give s few quotations. "Psridpur itself contains an area and s population of ?,1?1,914 persons. It is therefore as of 9,464 square miles large as Devon and contains more people than any English county except Lancashire and Yorkshire... the population is almost entirely rural... the true urban population is not more than ?0,000. There are no industries, so that the entire population, with insignificant exceptions, is dependent directly or indirectly, upon the produce of the soil for its livelihood: yet the. population is nine hundred to the square mile, far heavier than in any agricultural tract o! Europe and almost as. heavy as in any industrial tract of the same size." It is heavier still in some of the adjoining districts of Bengal. The district divides naturally into three parts; the north where the land is above the flood level and is already formed; the south east which is still in process of formation, being built up by the river silt; and the south west which for a greater part of the year is a vast lake. In the north of the district "the population clusters along the banks o! the old water courses, which are always fringed by a thick belt o! fruit and other trees... Away from the streams villases are found chiefly in the centre o! the depressions, where houses have been built only after mounds have been raised to place them above flood-level." In the south east of the district "very little of the present land has been in existence a hundred years and not very much for more than fifty years... Probably there has been land and population in all this country for five centuries or more . . . but the homesteads are new and orchards of well-grown trees are rarely to be seen." In the south west "the whole land is. a vast marsh, yet able to sustain a large and growing population... The dismal swamp now contains 800 people to the square mile, For eight months of the year the country is s,. lake, 700 square miles in extent, whose surface
