You must not ask men like this about the kinds and qualities of soils for they really know nothing whatever about them: they are _city gentlemen's sons_, who get into high places, and pass their lives in them without learning anything but how to screw money out of such as we are, who are born upon the soil, and depend upon its produce all our lives for subsistence.

Ask him, sir, whether either he or any of his ancestors ever knew anything of the difference between one soil and another." The collector acknowledged the truth of what the old man said, and told me that he really knew nothing about the matter, and had merely repeated what the people told him.

This is true with regard to the greater part of the local revenue officers employed in Oude.

"One of these city gentlemen, sir," said.

Bukhtawar Sing, "when sent out as a revenue collector, in Saadut Allee's time, was asked by his assistants what they were to do with a crop of sugar-cane which had been attached for balances, and was becoming too ripe, replied, '_Cut it down, to be sure, and have it stacked!_' He did not know that sugar-cane must, as soon as cut, be taken to the mill, or it spoils." "I have heard of another," said the old Rusaldar Nubbee Buksh, "who, after he entered upon his charge, asked the people about him to show him the tree on which grew the fine _istamalee_* rice which they used at Lucknow." "There is no question, sir," said Bukhtawar Sing, "that is too absurd, for these cockney gentlemen to ask when they enter upon such revenue charges as these.