k of judicial proof against
any individual. The author discusses infanticide as practised in Oudh
in many passages of his _Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh_
(Bentley, 1858), It is possible that female infanticide may be still
prevalent in many Native States. Mr. Willoughby in the years
preceding A.D. 1849 made great progress in stamping it out among the
Jharejas of the Kathiawar States in the Bombay Presidency. There is
reason to hope that the crime will gradually disappear from all parts
of India, but it is difficult to say how far it still prevails,
though the general opinion is that it is now comparatively rare
(_Census Report, India_, 1911, p. 217).

17. A college of more pretensions now exists at Jabalpur
(Jubbulpore), and is affiliated in Arts and Law to the University of
Allahabad established in 1887. The small college alluded to in the
text was abolished in 1850.

18. For description of the tedious and complicated 'sraddh'
ceremonies see chapter 11 of Monier Williams's _Religious Thought and
Life in India_.

19. This version of the story differs in some minute particulars from
the version given _ante_, [14].

CHAPTER 5

Marriages of Trees--The Tank and the Plantain--Meteors--Rainbows.

Before quitting Jubbulpore, to which place I thought it very unlikely
that I should ever return, I went to visit the groves in the
vicinity, which, at the time I held the civil charge of the district
in 1828, had been planted by different native gentlemen upon lands
assigned to them rent-free for the purpose, on condition that the
holder should bind himself to plant trees at the rate of twenty-five
to the acre, and keep them up at that rate; and that for each grove,
however small, he should build and keep in repair a well, lined with
masonry, for watering the trees, and for the benefit of
travellers.[1]

Some of these groves had already begun to yield fruit, and all had
been _married_. Among the Hindoos, neither the man who plants a
grove, nor his wife, can taste of the fruit till he has _married_ one
of the mango-trees to some other tree (commonly the tamarind-tree)
that grows near it in the same grove. The proprietor of one of these
groves that stands between the cantonment and the town, old Barjor
Singh, had spent so much in planting and watering the grove, and
building walls and wells of _pucka_[2] masonry, that he could not
afford to defray the expense of the marriage ceremonies till one of
the trees,