needed. Enquiry and investigation are the curse of India, as of any country where we do not act up to the light we have: where evils are investigated and re-investigated fifty times over, simply as an excuse for doing nothing.
Everybody has known for half a century that, if the water of Bengal were regulated, the superabundance carried off during the monsoon, and plenty of water, fresh from the rivers, carried through every village in the dry season for irrigation, drinking, and carriage, the whole condition of the people would be immeasurably improved. All that is wanted is that the works should be executed; but this is the one thing that will not be done.
We shall have the country levelled and surveyed, the works planned and approved, report upon report called for, and commission upon commission appointed: anything that can be done as a reason for doing nothing.
1. One question is whether an area of ground,Shallow water unhealthy. covered to such a depth with water as not to give off malaria from decomposition of dead organic matter, is necessarily unwholesome. This would be very much the condition of an ordinary tank, or of a lake in which the surface of the water is retained permanently at a fixed, or nearly fixed, level.
In the dry climate of Southern India such masses of water are said to be perfectly healthy; but in the warm, moist climate of Bengal the growth of aquatic plants is so prodigious that unless tanks are periodically cleared of the weeds and mosses, which form