schemes, with certain modifications, were introduced in 1862-63 and 1866-67 respectively.
It was not considered desirable, to survey or settle the whole of the villages belonging to Government. The scheme did not deal with 148 Government villages in the Agency and elsewhere in which patches of land were only cleared for temporary cultivation and abandoned after a year or two for fresh ones. These were left to be settled from year to year. Waste land, even in surveyed villages, was often left unclassified on the ground that it was not likely to be soon occupied; and many of the lankas in the Gódávari were omitted from the scheme, because their limits were continually fluctuating, and were ordered to be leased out annually by auction— a system which still obtains.
The remaining area was divided into the 'upland' and the 'delta,' according as it lay outside or within the influence of the Gódávari irrigation. In each of these tracts the villages were grouped into classes with reference to their general fertility and the quality of their irrigation sources. All the delta land was classed as dry, a uniform water-rate of Rs. 3 per acre being imposed on irrigated fields in addition to the dry assessment.
The soils were grouped into fourteen classes,1[1] the arenaceous series amounting to four per cent, of the whole, the alluvial to six, the red ferruginous varieties to 29 and the regar to 59 per cent. There was also an exceptional class, making up two per cent, of the whole, in which were placed the lankas in the Gódávari and the land irrigated by the Yeléru river in Peddápuram taluk.
The grain values of each of the 'sorts' into which these classes were subdivided were ascertained by experiment. The crops taken as the standard for each class were as under: — Lankas. Upland wet. Delta land and upland dry. Exceptional land under the Yeleru. Red. Black. Sandy. Tobacco. White paddy. Cholam. Cambu. Horse-gram. Cholam. Cambu. Ragi. Black 1 paddy. J Cambu. Ragi. Black paddy. White paddy. Sugar-cane. From the grain values, a deduction was made of one-sixth in the delta and one-fourth in the uplands to allow for vicissitudes
- ↑ 1 B.P. (Rev. Sett.), No, 43, dated 12th May 1896, p. 6.
