Hoeing cannot be repeated too frequently.  This is demonstrated by the practice of the most successful cultivators.  In Zilla, N. Mooradabad, in April, about six weeks after planting, the earth on each side of the cane-rows is loosened by a sharp-pointed hoe, shaped somewhat like a bricklayer’s trowel.  This is repeated six times before the field is laid out in beds and channels for irrigation.  There, likewise, if the season is unusually dry, the fields in the low ground are watered in May and June.  This supposes there are either nullahs, or ancient pucka wells, otherwise the canes are allowed to take their chance, for the cost of making a well on the uplands is from ten to twenty rupees—­an expense too heavy for an individual cultivator, and not many would dig in partnership, for they would fight for the water.

In the vicinity of Benares, as the canes advance in growth, they continue to wrap the leaves as they begin to wither up round the advancing stem, and to tie this to the bamboo higher up.  If the weather continue wet, the trenches are carefully kept open; and, on the other hand, if dry weather occurs, water is occasionally supplied.  Hoeing is also performed every five or six weeks.  Wrapping the leaves around the cane is found to prevent them cracking by the heat of the sun, and hinders their throwing out lateral branches.

In January and February the canes are ready for cutting.  The average height of the cane is about nine feet, foliage included, and the naked cane from one inch to one inch and a quarter in diameter.

Near Maduna, the hand-watering is facilitated by cutting a small trench down the centre of each bed.  The beds are there a cubit wide, but only four rows of canes are planted in each.

It is deserving of notice, that the eastern and north-eastern parts of Bengal are more subject to rain at every season of the year, but especially in the hot months, than the western; which accounts for the land being prepared and the plants set so much earlier in Rungpore than in Beerbhoom.  This latter country has also a dryer soil generally; for this reason, so much is said in the report from thence of the necessity of watering.

The Benares country is also dryer than Bengal, therefore more waterings are requisite.

At Malda, ten or fifteen days after the earth has been removed from the roots of the canes and the plants have appeared, the land is to be slightly manured, well cleared of weeds, and the earth that was removed again laid about the canes; after which, ten or fifteen days, it must be well weeded, and again twenty or twenty-five days afterwards.  This mode of cultivation it is necessary to follow until the month of Joystee.  The land must be ploughed and manured between the rows of canes in the month of Assaar; after which, fifteen or twenty days, the canes are to be tied two or three together with the leaves, the earth about them well cleaned, and the earth that was ploughed up laid about the roots of the canes something raised.  In the month of Saubun, twenty or twenty-five days from the preceding operation, the canes are tied as before, and again ten or fifteen days afterwards; which done, nine or ten clumps are then to be tied together.