laces in India),
the rainfall is 600 inches yearly, and it has been 650. As a
consequence rivers in India often overflow their banks. Therefore to
protect the country on the lower river reaches from floods the British
government has built over 1500 miles of embankments.

INDIA'S MINERAL RESOURCES

At one time India was famed for its wealth in precious minerals and
precious stones. Poets often celebrated its golden resources. But its
wealth in this respect was always fabulous rather than real. India is
in reality poor in minerals. It has a good deal of iron--iron of the
choicest quality. It has also a good deal of coal, but its coal is
poor, owing to its superabundance of ash. It has also a little copper
and tin. It has gold-mines that are worked. Diamonds, too, are found
in southern India, and numerously so. The celebrated Koh-i-nur (280
carats) was an Indian product. But neither diamond-hunting nor
gold-mining is any longer a profitable industry in India. The
principal mineral industry of India is salt-mining, pursued in the
Punjaub, where there are solid cliffs of pure salt. Owing to the fact
that the people of India are mostly vegetarians (250,000,000 of
Hindoos would rather die than eat flesh), salt is a necessary article
of diet and a universal commodity. Its production, therefore, is
controlled by the government as a means of raising revenue.

INDIA'S WONDERFUL AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES

[Illustration: Comparative sizes of India and the United States.]

The real wealth of India lies in the luxuriance and economic value of
its VEGETATION. As a consequence the principal industry is
AGRICULTURE. Only one tenth of the people live in towns. Two thirds of
the adult males in the country are engaged wholly in tilling the soil.
Every sort of agricultural product known to commerce is raised in
India; for from the high levels on the mountain sides to the low
levels on the coasts the vegetation of the whole world is produced
within its borders. Even in WHEAT India competes in the world's
markets with countries like Russia and Argentina. In 1896 British
India had 19,000,000 acres of wheat under cultivation, and (though a
dearth year) an exportation of $4,000,000. In 1892 the exportation was
$25,000,000. The district known as the Central Provinces of India has
become one of the most important wheat areas in the world. But the
principal agricultural product of India is RICE. British India alone
has 70,000,000 acres of rice un