MUZAFFARNAGAR. the Ganges Canal is working evil, and village after village has been injured by the increasing marsh area, rendering year by year fresh fields useless, and causing cultivation to dwindle. Canal irrigation has made the upland so much more attractive to cultivators, that it is difficult to keep the inhabitants of the valley to the tract that they have occupied from time immemorial. The population is said to be here decreasing, and wild animals to be increasing, so that between the deterioration of the soil, the superior attractions held out elsewhere to tenants, and the increasing difficulty of cultivation, the future prospects of this tract are not promising. The khidar, however, will always be a useful grazing ground, and it may perhaps be made to yield a larger supply of timber for the ploughs and sugar mills of the prosperous upland than it does at present. This lowland valley is succeeded on the west by the first of the three central plateaux, extending as far as the Káli Nadi. It is reached by a low terrace, deeply cut into ravines by the surface drainage, and of little agricultural value. The upland region is naturally sandy and unfertile ; but it is watered and enriched by the main line of the Ganges Canal, which enters the District from SAHARANPUR, and gives off the Anúpshahr branch near the village of Jauli. Under the influence of irrigation, the soil is rapidly improving, and the character of the crops has been greatly raised. The next division, passing westward, is the triangular upland enclosed between the valleys of the Hindan and the Káli Nadi. These minor streams flow in deep channels; but the soil is naturally fertile, and the water obtained from wells is sufficient to turn it into a highly cultivated tract. The Deoband branch of the Ganges Canal was introduced into the Hindan-Káli doub a few years ago. The land is high throughout the centre of this tract, and is naturally fertile, but the water-level is, as a rule, at a great depth. The eastern and western portions of this central highland slope down to the rivers on either side, and are there marked by much broken ground, and a tendency, especially in the south, to an increase of ravines which cut into the good land above. The lowland along the Hindan is marked by steeper banks, is larger in area, broader and more fertile than that of the Kálí Nadi. Along the latter river, several estates have been injured by the appearance of reh, due to excessive saturation, and the overflow of the river itself in time of flood. The westernmost plateau is that which stretches between the Hindan and the Jumna, and is watered by the Eastern Jumna Canal. In the neighbourhood of the Junna, much of the land is covered with dhák jungle, through which occasional oases of light sandy soil crop out in little elevated bosses; but elsewhere the labour of the villagers and the
