There seems to be a widespread prevalence of distress from
drought this year. The Russian famine is due primarily to' that cause, and distress from want of water is now reported from Galicia. The droughts in the drier sections of Aus- tralia have been most severe, in the Broken Hills mining district, for example, there is a true water-famine ; in some districts of Upper Burmah the people are living on relief works; and in whole divisions of India rain is anxiously looked for, but does not come. There is keen apprehension in the North-West Provinces and Bengal, though as yet nothing worse ; but there are signs of famine in Rajpootana, and in the drier counties of Madras the number of persons seeking relief on public works, though not yet great (thirty thousand on Saturday), is steadily mounting up. The Governments every- where are doing their best; but in countries dependent on agriculture or stock-rearing, nothing can compensate for a deficient supply of rain. Our engineers ought by this time to know how to store water as well as the old Hindoos did ; but something, probably the difficulty, of extracting profit, seems to arrest the employment of their knowledge. The works required are very large, though simple enougb in structure; labour grows.dearer every day; and the profits of irrigation are not steady enough to tempt private speculation. We do not quite see why, in India at any rate, all conviet labour should not be directed for a series of years towards water-storage.
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