devoted to rice cultivation, the water being conducted to the
embanked fields by an elaborate system of little canals or _kuhls_. This
is the only irrigation in the mountains, and is much valued. The
Submontane Zone has a rainfall of from 30 to 40 inches. Well irrigation
is little used and the dry crops are generally secure. Wheat and maize
are the great staples, but gram and _chari_, i.e. _jowar_ grown for
fodder, are also important. Some further information about Kashmir
agriculture will be found in a later chapter. For full details about
classes of cultivation and crops in all the zones Tables II, III and IV
should be consulted.

~North Central Panjab Plain.~--The best soils and the finest tillage are
to be found in the North Central Zone. Gujrat has been included in it,
though it has also affinities in the north with the North-West area, and
in the south with the South-Western plain. The rainfall varies from 25
to 35 inches. One-third of the cultivated area is protected by wells,
and the well cultivation is of a very high class in Ludhiana and
Jalandhar, where heavily manured maize is followed by a fine crop of
wheat, and cane is commonly grown. In parts of Sialkot and Gujrat the
well cultivation is of a different type, the area served per well being
large and the object being to protect a big acreage of wheat in the
spring harvest. The chief crops in this zone are wheat and _chari_. The
latter is included under "Other Fodder" in Tables III and IV.

~North-Western Area.~--The plateau north of the Salt Range has a very
clean light white sandy loam soil requiring little ploughing and no
weeding. It is often very shallow, and this is one reason for the great
preference for cold weather crops. _Kharif_ crops are more liable to be
burned up. Generally speaking the rainfall is from 15 to 25 inches, the
proportion falling in the winter and spring being larger than elsewhere.
There is, except in Peshawar and Bannu, where the conditions involve a
considerable divergence from the type of this zone, practically no canal
irrigation. The well irrigation is unimportant and in most parts
consists of a few acres round each well intensively cultivated with
market-gardening crops. The dry crops are generally very precarious. In
Mianwali the Indus valley is a fine tract, but the harvests fluctuate
greatly with the extent of the floods. The Thal in Mianwali to the south
of the Sind Sagar railway is really a part of the next zone.

~T