[* Caused, possibly, by the Vendeya range once extending E. N. E. up to the Himmalaya chain, which runs E. S. E. It now extends up only to the right bank of the Ganges, at Chunar and Mirzapoor.]

Rain-water,* which contains no such salts, falls after the dry season is over, and washes out of the upper surface a portion of the salts, which have thus been brought up from below and accumulated, and either takes them off in floods or carries them down again to the beds below.  Some of these salts, or their bases, may become superabundant, and render the lands oosur or unfit for ordinary tillage.  There may be a superabundance of those which are not required, or cannot be taken up by the plants, actually on the surface, or there may be a superabundance of the whole, from the plants and rain-water being insufficient to take away such as require to be removed.  These salts are here, as elsewhere, of great variety; nitrates of ammonia, which, combining with the inorganic substances—­ magnesia, lime, soda, potash, alumina, and oxide of iron—­form double salts, and become soluble in water, and fit food for plants.  Or there may be a deficiency of vegetable mould (humus) or manure to supply, with the aid of carbonic acid, air, water, and ammonia, the organic acids required to adapt the inorganic substances to the use of plants.

[* Rain-water contains small quantities of carbonic acid, ammonia, atmospheric air, and vegetable or animal matter.]

All are, in due proportion, more or less conducive to the growth and perfection of the plants, which men and animals require from the soil:  some plants require more of the one, and some more of another; and some find a superabundance of what they need, where others find a deficiency, or none at all.  The muteear seems to differ from the doomuteea soil, in containing a greater portion of those elements which constitute what are called good clay soils.  The inorganic portions of these elements—­silicates, carbonates, sulphates, phosphates, and chlorides of lime, potash, magnesia, alumina, soda, oxides of iron and manganese—­it derives from the detritus of the granite, gneiss, mica, and chlorite slate, limestone and sandstone rocks, in which the Himmalaya chain of mountains so much abounds; and the organic elements—­humates, almates, geates, apoerenates, and crenates—­it derives from the mould, formed from the decay of animal and vegetable matter.  It is more hydroscopic, or capable of absorbing and retaining moisture, and fixing ammonia than the doomuteea.  It is of a darker colour, and forms more into clods to retain moisture.  I may here mention that the Himmalaya chain does not abound in volcanic rocks, like the chains of Central and Southern India; and that the soils, which are formed from its detritus, contain, in consequence, less phosphoric acid, and is less adapted to the growth of that numerous class of plants which cannot live without phosphates.  The volcanic rocks form a plateaux upon the sandstone,