§ British India is divided into 250 administrative districts. No less than 115 of these districts were classified as famine 430 districts, although no district comes into that category unless it has upwards of 10,000 persons upon relief works. Of the districts outside, few, except those in Burma, had any large spare surplus of food; and thus the usual experience of famine administration was reversed. There was a great falling off in the railway receipts, instead of the increase which in previous famines was associated with the carriage of food by railway. Under conditions such as these, it would have been assumed that great imports of food from abroad would have come into India, that a very high death-rate would have prevailed in the districts where great famine relief works were instituted, and that, it, would have been possible to obtain an unlimited quantity of labour of low grade. Such anticipations, however, were not fulfilled. High prices, according to the Indian standard, prevailed over an enormous area, but they were not relatively high when compared by the standard of prices in other countries. At the commencement of the scarcity a large shipment of wheat from America arrived in Calcutta and Bombay. Every sale connected with this in India was made at a loss, and ultimately a very large proportion of it was sent back to this country, where it obtained a higher price, and a better market. And, as a matter of fact, prices in India, even at the worst period of the famine, were too low to encourage imports of food from outside. As to the death rate, in 1877 it was terribly high; but this year, although great distress and suffering and a high death rate prevailed in the North-West Provinces and the Central Provinces, the death rate in the famine districts of Bengal, Madras, and the Punjab was normal, and even in those districts where the death rate was high, it was almost entirely due to the reluctance of the people to come in until too late, or to constant and severe outbreaks of cholera. As to the conditions of the labouring masses, the Government railway programme was greatly enlarged last year, and I hear from all sides that there has been during the past autumn in India a greater difficulty in getting the requisite amount of labour for these works than 431 existed in the preceding years. The explanation of this apparent anomaly lies in the immense improvement which has taken place in working the system of famine relief. A subsistence allowance was given to every man and to every member of his family who applied for relief, and this allowance in the aggregate not infrequently exceeded the remuneration which the man alone from his labour could obtain from ordinary employment.