“The religion, manners, natural history, traditions, and arts of this country may, certainly, furnish subjects on which my communications might, perhaps, be not uninteresting; but to offer anything deserving of attention would require a season of leisure to collect and digest information. Engaged in public and busy scenes, my mind is wholly engrossed by the cares and duties of my station; in vain I seek, for relaxation’s sake, to direct my thoughts to other subjects; matters of business constantly recur. It is for this cause that I have occasionally apologized for a dearth of subjects, having no occurrences to relate, and the matters which occupy my attention being uninteresting as a subject of correspondence.” When, after a time, the hope of distinguishing himself impelled Colebrooke to new exertions, and he determined to become an author, the subject which he chose was not antiquarian or philosophical, but purely practical. “Translations,” he writes, in 1790, “are for those who rather need to fill their purses than gratify their ambition. For original compositions on Oriental history and sciences is required more reading in the literature of the East than I possess, or am likely to attain. My subject should be connected with those matters to which my attention is professionally led. One subject is, I believe, yet untouched--the agriculture of Bengal. On this I have been curious of information; and, having obtained some, I am now pursuing inquiries with some degree of regularity. I wish for your opinion, whether it would be worth while to reduce into form the information which may be obtained on a subject necessarily dry, and which (curious, perhaps) is, certainly, useless to English readers.” Among the subjects of which he wishes to treat in this work we find some of antiquarian interest, _e.g._, what castes of Hindus are altogether forbid cultivating, and what castes have religious prejudices against the culture of particular articles. Others are purely technical; for instance, the question of the succession and mixture of crops. He states that the Hindus have some traditional maxims on the succession of crops to which they rigidly adhere; and with regard to mixture, he observes that two, three, or even four different articles are sown in the same field, and gathered successively, as they ripen; that they are sometimes all sown on the same day, sometimes at different periods, etc.