3 JANUARY 1874, Page 10

There is little substantial news about the famine, except that

rain has fallen in Behar, apparently for a day or two ; that the Bhagulpore zemindars have refused to receive advances or to assist their tenants ; that Burdwan has been included in the distressed districts, as we expected it to be ; that in Behar the peasantry are eating new rice,—that is, risking death by dysentery in fear of death by hunger ; and that Sir G. Campbell's first report on the famine, dated November 25, has reached England. It is a rather vague sketch of the famine of 1770, which the writer concludes to have been, as regards the whole country, rather worse than the present one, but ends by reminding the Viceroy that the Orissa famine of 1865 was preceded by years of plenty ; and that in South Bengal the famine of 1770 exceeded anything ever known in Bengal within historic times, and that consequently no precaution must be relaxed. Sir George Campbell advises the prohibition of export and the purchase of food, and regrets that only the second suggestion has been adopted. Sir G. Campbell attempts no account of the deaths caused by the famine of 1770, and thinks Macaulay's account exaggerated, but he mentions that although it began in Behar, its fullest effect was felt in Moorshedabad, where "rice rose to 6 lbs. for the rupee,"—a statement equivalent to saying that the Mark Lane average for wheat was /30 a quarter. There is no hopefulness in the telegrams yet, beyond a shag of improvement in the prospects of the spring harvest.