unscientific; and, as I have already remarked, all probability of exaggeration was avoided in the above-named investigation. As to the standing 'Rabi' crops, there was the eye estimate and it was tested by the method above mentioned. The Government method is an eye estimate and therefore a matter largely of guess-work. It is moreover open to fundamental objections which I have endeavoured to set forth in a letter to the Collector of the District. I requested him to treat Vadthal—a well-known and ordinarily well-to-do village of the District with the railway line passing by it and which is near a trade centre—as a test case, and I suggested that if the crops were in that village proved to be under four annas, as I hold they were, it might be assumed that in the other villages less fortunately situated, crops were not likely to be more than four annas. I have added to my request a suggestion that I should be permitted to be present at the inquiry. He made the inquiry, but rejected my suggestion, and therefore it proved to be one-sided. The Collector has made an elaborate report on the crops of that village, which in my opinion I have successfully challenged. The original Government valuation, I understand, was twelve annas, the Collector's minimum valution is seven annas. If the probably wrong methods of valuation to which I have drawn attention and which have been adopted by the Collector are allowed for, the valuation according to his own reckoning would come under six annas and according to the agriculturists it would be under four annas. Both the report and my answer are too technical to be of value to the public. But I have suggested that, as both the Government and agriculturists hold themselves in the right, if the Government have any regard for
