hardly anything suffered from the attacks
of these fungi but the wheat. The 'alsi', upon which it always first
made its appearance, suffered something certainly, but not much,
though the stems and leaves were covered with them. The gram (_Cicer
arietinum_) suffered still less--indeed the grain in this plant often
remained uninjured, while the stems and leaves were covered with the
fungi, in the midst of fields of wheat that were entirely destroyed
by ravages of the same kind. None of the other pulses were injured,
though situated in the same manner in the midst of the fields of
wheat that were destroyed. I have seen rich fields of uninterrupted
wheat cultivation for twenty miles by ten, in the valley of the
Nerbudda, so entirely destroyed by this disease that the people would
not go to the trouble of gathering one field in four, for the stalks
and the leaves were so much injured that they were considered as
unfit or unsafe for fodder; and during the same season its ravages
were equally felt in the districts along the tablelands of the
Vindhya range, north of the valley and, I believe, those upon the
Satpura range, south. The last time I saw this blight was in March,
1832, in the Sagar district, where its ravages were very great, but
partial; and I kept bundles of the blighted wheat hanging up in my
house, for the inspection of the curious, till the beginning of
1835.[6]

When I assumed charge of the district of Sagar in 1831 the opinion
among the farmers and landholders generally was that the calamities
of season under which we had been suffering were attributable to the
increase of _adultery_, arising, as they thought, from our
indifference, as we seemed to treat it as a matter of little
importance; whereas it had always been considered under former
Governments as a case of _life and death_. The husband or his friends
waited till they caught the offending parties together in criminal
correspondence, and then put them both to death; and the death of one
pair generally acted, they thought, as a sedative upon the evil
passions of a whole district for a year or two. Nothing can be more
unsatisfactory than our laws for the punishment of adultery in India,
where the Muhammadan criminal code has been followed, though the
people subjected to it are not one-tenth Muhammadans. This law was
enacted by Muhammad on the occasion of his favourite wife Ayesha
being found under very suspicious circumstances with another man. A
specia