y,
however, interspersed with jheels and nullahs, it is difficult to
form a cultivation without a considerable mixture of low lands, more
or less, according to the situation of the Assamee's fields. Great
care should be taken, at all events, to guard against oosur lands,
or such as abound with saltpetre; these can be most easily detected
in the dry months. _Puchkatak_, that is, lands slightly touched with
_oosur_, have been known to answer, as partaking more of the nature
of _doruss_ soil; but the crop is generally thin, although strong
and branchy.

There is another description of land that should be cautiously
avoided. It goes by the name of _jaung_, and is a light soil, with a
substratum of sand from six to twelve inches below the surface. The
plant generally looks very fine in such fields till it gets a foot
high, when the root touching the sand, and having no moisture to
sustain it, either dies away altogether, or becomes so stunted and
impoverished as to yield little or nothing in the cutting. Of the
_daub_ or _dearab_ (alluvial) land, says Mr. Ballard, there is
scarcely any in the district except what falls to the lot of my own
factories, being situated on the banks of the Ganges and Great
Gunduck. Of _bungur_, a stiff reddish clay soil, there is little in
Tirhoot; it pervades the western provinces, and is best adapted for
Assaroo sowings, which do not succeed in Tirhoot.

_Preparation of the soil._--The root of the indigo plant being
fusiform, and extending to about a foot in length, requires the soil
to be loosened thoroughly to that depth at least. Experience
teaches that the fineness of the tilth to which the soil is reduced
previously to the seed being committed to it, is one very
influential operation for the obtaining a productive crop. Yet in
some districts of Bengal, particularly about Furudpore, the sowing
is performed without any previous ploughing. This is where the
river, when receded, has left the soil and deposit so deep, that
about October, or a little later, the seed being forcibly discharged
from the sower's hand, buries itself, and requires no after covering
by means of the rake or harrow.

In Tirhoot they are indefatigable in this first step of the
cultivation. Mr. Ballard says, that the preparation of indigo lands
should commence in September,