gher up. If the
weather continue wet, the trenches are carefully kept open; and, on
the other hand, if dry weather occurs, water is occasionally supplied.
Hoeing is also performed every five or six weeks. Wrapping the leaves
around the cane is found to prevent them cracking by the heat of the
sun, and hinders their throwing out lateral branches.

In January and February the canes are ready for cutting. The average
height of the cane is about nine feet, foliage included, and the naked
cane from one inch to one inch and a quarter in diameter.

Near Maduna, the hand-watering is facilitated by cutting a small
trench down the centre of each bed. The beds are there a cubit wide,
but only four rows of canes are planted in each.

It is deserving of notice, that the eastern and north-eastern parts of
Bengal are more subject to rain at every season of the year, but
especially in the hot months, than the western; which accounts for the
land being prepared and the plants set so much earlier in Rungpore
than in Beerbhoom. This latter country has also a dryer soil
generally; for this reason, so much is said in the report from thence
of the necessity of watering.

The Benares country is also dryer than Bengal, therefore more
waterings are requisite.

At Malda, ten or fifteen days after the earth has been removed from
the roots of the canes and the plants have appeared, the land is to be
slightly manured, well cleared of weeds, and the earth that was
removed again laid about the canes; after which, ten or fifteen days,
it must be well weeded, and again twenty or twenty-five days
afterwards. This mode of cultivation it is necessary to follow until
the month of Joystee. The land must be ploughed and manured between
the rows of canes in the month of Assaar; after which, fifteen or
twenty days, the canes are to be tied two or three together with the
leaves, the earth about them well cleaned, and the earth that was
ploughed up laid about the roots of the canes something raised. In the
month of Saubun, twenty or twenty-five days from the preceding
operation, the canes are tied as before, and again ten or fifteen days
afterwards; which done, nine or ten clumps are then to be tied
together.

In the Rojahmundry Circar, on the Delta of the Godavery, Dr. Roxburgh
states, "that nothing more is done after the cane is planted, if the
weather be moderately showery, till the young shoots are some two or
three inches high; the earth is then loo