sown in it, but not very generally.  This black soil requires little rain, and is fertile without manure.  It absorbs water too freely to be suitable for irrigation, and in most seasons does not need it.  The ‘black cotton soil’ is often known as regur, a corruption of a Tamil word.  ’The origin of regur is a doubtful question. . . .  The dark coloration was attributed by earlier writers to vegetable matter, and taken to indicate a large amount of humus in the soil; more recent investigations make this doubtful, and in all probability the colour is due to mineral constitution rather than to the very scanty organic constituents of the soil,’ It may possibly be formed of ‘wind-borne dust’, like the loess plains of China (Oldham, in The Oxford Survey of the British Empire, vol. ii, Asia, p. 9:  Oxford, 1914).

8.  The land revenue has been largely increased, and the resources and communications of the country have been greatly developed during the last half-century.  The formation of the Central Provinces as a separate administration in 1861 secured for the Sagar and Nerbudda territories the attention which they failed to obtain from the distant Government of the North-Western Provinces.  Sir Richard Temple, the first Chief Commissioner, administered the Central Provinces with extraordinary energy and success.

9.  Raja Chhatarsal Bundela was Raja of Panna.  The history of Chhatarsal is related in I.G. (1908), vol. xix, p. 400, s.v.  Panna State.  In 1729 he called in the Marathas to help him against Muhammad Khan Bangash, and when he died in 1731 rewarded them by bequeathing one-third of his dominions to the Peshwa.  The correct date of his death is Pus Badi 3, Samvat 1788 (Hamirpur Settlement Report (1880), note at end of chapter 2).  The date is often given inaccurately.

10.  Chitrakot, in the Banda district of Bundelkhand, under the government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and seventy-one miles distant from Allahabad, is a famous place of pilgrimage, much frequented by the votaries of Rama.  Large fairs are held there.

11.  The performance of miraculous cures at the tomb is not necessary for the deification of a person who has been specially feared in his lifetime, or has died a violent death.  Either of these conditions is enough to render his ghost formidable, and worthy of propitiation.  Shrines to such persons are very numerous both in Bundelkhand and other parts of India, Miracles, of course, occur at nearly every shrine, and are too common and well attested to attract much attention.

12.  These observations are as true to-day as they were in the author’s time.  Disastrous cases of over-assessment were common in the early years of British rule, and the mischief so wrought has been sometimes traceable for generations afterwards.  Since 1833 the error, though less common, has not been unknown.