I shall have the help of five local assistants in Bengal; and my obligations to the two gentlemen in my personal office have been very great. But I beg that those who come after me may, in improving on my work, remember the conditions under which it has been done. When it was commenced six years ago, no one knew precisely the population of a single District in Bengal; and the Departments of Government were wont to base their estimates on separate and often widely discrepant estimates, both as to the number of the people and the area of its territory.
Each volume will deal with a group of Districts representing on an average a population of about four million souls, or nearly one million more than that of Scotland. The present five volumes exhibit the statistics of a population more than six times the inhabitants of that country. The complete work will contain the results of my Statistical Survey of the whole fifty-nine Districts of Bengal and Assam. Each volume proceeds on a uniform plan, dealing with the same subjects in the same order of sequence, and, as far as possible, in the same words. In adjoining Districts which possess many features in common, this system involves frequent repetitions. But such repetitions are unavoidable, if a complete separate Account of each District is to be given. In every District I start with a description of its geography, general aspects, and physical features. I then proceed to the people, their occupations, ethnical divisions and creeds, with their material condition and distribution into town and country. Agriculture follows, with special details regarding rice cultivation and other crops, the condition of the husbandmen, the size of their farms, their implements, land tenures, prices and wages, rates of rent, and the natural calamities to which the District is subject. Its commerce, means of communication, manufactures, capital and interest, and other industrial aspects are then dealt with. The working of the District Administration is next exhibited in considerable detail,—its revenue and expenditure at present and at previous periods; the statistics of protection to person and property, the police, the jails, and the criminal
