A large majority of the Hindoos are agriculturists. The staple crops are wheat, rice, and different species of pease. The wheat production of India exerts a great influence on the grain market of Europe, and is one of the most dangerous competitors to our American wheat. Having been ordered by the United States government to report on the wheat growing of India, I made this a special object of investigation and study, and in December, 1882, sent a report to the government in Washington which is our first reliable information on that subject; it elicited a great deal of attention, and was a source of genuine surprise in this country. I submit a few extracts from this report: The annual wheat production of India now reaches two hundred and forty million bushels, of which two hundred million may be exported, while the natives make their bread from other kinds of grain. The total area devoted to wheat each year is now a little over twenty million acres, and the best average yield is thirteen and one-half bushels per acre. Wheat growing is now receiving the special attention of the general and local governments, and important works are being made and projected for an extensive system of canal irrigation. One of these, the Sirhind canal in the Punjab, has just been completed; it was built mainly by prison labor, is five hundred and two miles long, and will irrigate seven hundred and eighty thousand acres through two thousand five hundred miles of minor channels. The wheat is sown in the autumn and harvested in March or April; it is usually sown in drills or rows, weeded like garden stuff, and in quantities not much larger than garden patches in the United States. The agricultural population numbers nearly two hundred millions; it is the aggregate of innumerable little units which, in agriculture, as in everything else in India, brings the country into importance; and this fact is so closely interwoven with the whole social, industrial and legal network of India, that it bears a strong influence even upon the future question of Indian _versus_ American wheat. [Illustration: PLOWING IN INDIA.]