corroborated by the facts.  There is no evidence to show that droughts have increased, but there can be no doubt that in comparatively recent times famines and scarcities have.  And in looking over the list of famines from 1769 to 1877, I find that, comparing the first 84 years of the period in question with the years from then up to 1877, famines have more than doubled in number, and scarcities, causing great anxiety to the State, seem certainly to be increasing.  That the latter are so we have strong evidence in Mysore, and in looking over the annual addresses of the Dewan at the meeting of the Representative Assembly of Mysore, I am struck with the frequent allusion to scarcities and grave apprehensions of famine.  In his address of 1881, only four years after the great famine of 1876-77, the Dewan refers to “the period of intense anxiety through which the Government and the people have passed owing to the recent failure of the rains.  But,” he adds, “such occasional failure of rains is almost a normal condition of the Province, and the Government must always remain in constant anxiety as to the fearful results which must follow from them.”  In his address of 1884 the Dewan says that “the condition of the Province is again causing grave anxiety.”  In the address of 1886 the Dewan says “this is the first year since the rendition of the Province (in 1881) in which the prospects of the season have caused no anxiety to the Government.”  But in the address of 1891 lamentations again occur, and we find the Dewan congratulating the members on the narrow escape, owing to rain having fallen just in time, they had had from famine.  But our able Dewan—­Sir K. Sheshadri Iyer, K.C.I.E.—­has taken measures which must ultimately place the Province in a safe position, or at least in as safe a position as it can be placed.  He has seen, and it has been amply proved by our experience in the Madras Presidency during the famine of 1876-77, that the only irrigation work that can withstand a serious drought is a deep well, and he has brought out a most admirable measure for encouraging the making of them by the ryots.  The principal features of this are that money, to be repaid gradually over a long series of years, is to be advanced by the State on the most easy terms, and that, in the event of a ryot taking a loan, and water not being found, or found in inadequate quantity, the Government takes upon itself the entire loss.  But the results from this highly liberal and valuable measure cannot be adequately arrived at for many years to come, and in the meanwhile the risks from famine go on, and as the Dewan has seen that these can only be immediately grappled with by an extension of the railway system, he has always been, anxious to make a line to the western frontier of Mysore, if the Madras Government would agree to carry it on to Mangalore on the western coast.  But the Madras Government felt itself unable to find funds to carry out the project, and hence Mysore, all along its western frontier,