In the course of our journey I saw a bullock-cart swerve off the road and fall bottom upwards into a field on a much lower level. Anyone unfamiliar with bullock-cart accidents would expect much more disastrous results from such a mishap than was probably actually the case; but I saw the tragedy when we were already far ahead, and our driver of course never saw it at all. Consternation was excited in the traffic ahead of us by the hoot of the car. Drivers, who had already experienced the effect of a motor-car on their beasts, leapt from their cart, and hastily urging the bullocks to the side of the road, stood in front of them and blind-folded their eyes with their garments so that they might not see the apparition tearing by. After a little familiarity with motors, the philosophic Indian bullock soon gets to regard them with supreme indifference. CHAPTER XLVI AGRICULTURE IN INDIA Agricultural colleges. Indian soil exhausted; need of chemical manures. Signs of progress among farmers. The city sweepings. Sugar cane; hospitalities connected with it; we are invited; our reception; the juice from the cane; its produce in other forms. Potatoes. The Indian evening; its rapid approach. Return of the cattle. The Government of India are spending large sums on agricultural research. They have a College of Agriculture on an extensive scale at Pusa, in Bengal, and another big college near Poona has just been completed. These handsome buildings, with their chemical laboratories, lecture rooms, and English professors, seem at the first glance strangely remote from the homely farmer in his native village, and the first inclination is to suggest that these colleges will only produce a crop of ornamental figure-heads, who will graduate in agriculture, but who will make no practical use of the knowledge which they have acquired. But the aim of these colleges is not quite so visionary as one might think. The Government realises that it will be long before the influence of the college reaches the small farmer in his village. The real point is that the soil of India is worn out through continued cropping without manuring, and it now only yields a small percentage of what it might produce, if properly treated. Farmyard manure, such as the English farmer so largely depends upon for the enrichment of his land, does not exist in India. This is partly because the cattle are roaming about all day, and as a rule are only gathered into sheds at night; partly because the coarse stalks of the native kinds of grain are not suitable for stable litter like English straw; but chiefly because the droppings from the cattle are made up into flat cakes and dried in the sun, which are then used as fuel in conjunction with a certain amount of wood. This custom is so rooted that it would be hopeless to try and modify it. Nor indeed is there any other fuel available. It is long before coal will find its way into common use for cooking purposes.