[91] There are various reasons which prevent the Indians from imitating the household furniture and cooking utensils of the Europeans. The poorer sort of people cannot do it, on account of their circumstances; and the rich will not, because they hate and detest the whites, by whom they are oppressed. Besides, many of the European customs, articles of furniture, &c. are not suited to the climate of India. The attachment of the Indians to every thing handed down to them by their ancestors, arises from that pride prevalent among all little cultivated nations, who, like the Chinese for example, consider what they themselves possess as the best in the world. _F._ [92] The object of agriculture in India is almost exclusively rice, and that kind of it the growth and increase of which are particularly promoted by inundating the fields. As the chief point is to devise proper means for watering the land, the large rivers have been divided into small streams, and conducted by ditches and canals to the nearest plains. When the rivers are not swelled up by abundant rains, so as to overflow their banks, the water is raised by machines put in motion by men or oxen; or large reservoirs are formed, which the Europeans call _Tangs_ or _Tanks_. In these reservoirs the rain water, which pours down in torrents during the time of the monsoons, is collected, and afterwards conveyed through different channels to the rice fields. A great deal of sesamum is sown on account of its oil; and poppies, particularly in Bengal, are cultivated, in order to produce opium. Millet, maize, and the kind of rice which grows in dry soil, are less generally cultivated. Rice, when freed from the husk, is called _Nella_. Every Indian has in his house a wooden mortar and pestle for reducing it to that state.--Horticulture, in India, consists only in planting certain portions of ground with palms and different kinds of fruit trees. The fruits are figs, oranges, lemons, pomegranates, &c. The coco, areca, and butter-palms are the trees most common in gardens: roses, jasmin, and different kinds of lilies, are reared on account of their smell.--Botany is comprehended only in the _Upaveda_ books, written in the earliest periods, in the Samscred language; one division of which, the _Adschurveda_, gives an account of the uses of the Indian plants, together with the method of cultivating them. This part of the sacred books