of Bharatpur and Khargáon, which contain a total population of about 190,000. The dispensary is well supported by local subscriptions, owing to the exertions of the native surgeon. The Kándí municipality gives £50 a year. The Páikpárá estate, now under the Court of Wards, also contributes largely; in 1872, the Mahárání made a special donation of £50. In 1871, the number of out-door patients was 2964; and in 1872, 2940. Acommodation for in-door patients at Kándí is now under consideration. In 1871, the total income amounted to 160; the expenditure to £146, 3s. 8d.; the cost to Government, £6, 17s. od. In 1872, the income was £209, 14s. od.; the expenditure, 160, 18s. od.; and the cost to Government, 18, 8s. od. In 1872, the subscriptions from Europeans amounted to 1, 10s. od., and those from natives to £184, 16s. od.

(6) THE LALGOLA DISPENSARY was founded in 1872 by the heir to the Lálgolá Ráj, who supports the establishment entirely at his own charges. There is suitable acommodation for in-door patients. No statistics are available; but when the Civil Surgeon visited the place in the early part of 1873, he found everything proceeding in the most satisfactory manner, and ascertained that the average number of sick treated daily was eighty out-door and eight in-door patients. The statistics of all the dispensaries in the District are given in a tabular form on the following page.

LUNATIC ASYLUMS.-There are two Government lunatic asylums in Murshidábád District; one at Máidapur, about three miles from the civil station, an old and unhealthy building; the other, capable of accommodating 230 patients, forms a portion of the old Barhampur barracks, which have lately been appropriated to this use. It was originally contemplated that the new asylum should take over the patients from the old, and that the Máidapur building should be entirely disused. But this plan has been abandoned for the present, owing to the great increase in the number of lunatics who become chargeable to Government. During the past eleven years this number has almost doubled itself; and consequently, on the opening of the Barhampur asylum, it was immediately occupied by the overflow from the crowded asylums in other parts of Bengal, and the Máidapur asylum remains as full as ever.

In the year 1874 the statistics of the Máidapur asylum were as follow :-Total treated, 98; cured, 14; transferred to friends, 4; died, [Sentence continued on page 251.

COMPARATIVE STATISTICS OF DISPENSARIES IN MURSHIDABAD DISTRICT FOR THE YEAR 1872.

A sixth Dispensary at Lálgolá was opened at the close of 1872, but no statistics are available.

0 1440 18 01945 6 o

Sentence continued from page 249.]

5, or 6.6 per cent; daily average strength, 75'11; daily average sick, 3.23. So far as possible, the lunatics are employed in gardening. The Barhampur asylum was first opened towards the close of 1874, and was to a great extent occupied by patients transferred from Dalanda and Patná. It is capable of accommodating 230 patients. During the few months of 1874 that it was open, the statistics were: Total treated, 118; cured, nil; transferred to friends, 1; died, 6; daily average strength, 82.3; daily average sick, 6. In explanation of the comparatively large number of deaths, it is stated that all the patients who died were, with one exception, over forty years of age; and that half died within a month after arrival in the asylum.

CATTLE DISEASES.-Murshidábád District is liable to be visited frequently and severely by various forms of cattle disease; but, apparently, not to a greater extent than the neighbouring Districts. There is no accurate record preserved of these several visitations, nor of the mortality caused by them. The Cattle Plague Commissioners of 1870 visited several villages in the District, and received universal testimony that frequent outbreaks of the disease called. mátá basanta or gutí prevailed. This disease is a species of cattle small-pox, identified by the Commissioners with the rinderpest of Europe, and generally terminates fatally, as no remedial measures are adopted. The symptoms are thus described :—Dry muzzle ; discharge from eyes and nose; ears drooping; miliary eruptions all over the body; eyes oedematous; excoriation of gums and floor of mouth; cough; loss of appetite, with difficulty in swallowing; offensive breath; purging of blood and mucus. The eruptions and the purging commence on about the third or fourth day; and the cattle die from the third to the fifteenth day. The disease is admitted to be contagious, but segregation, as a preventive measure, is altogether beyond the abilities of the rayats. In one village visited by the Commissioners, out of 112 cattle, 66 had been attacked, and 56 died, as well as 5 or 6 sheep. One of the informants, a village mandal aged ninety years, stated that he had seen the disease four times in his life, of which the first occasion was when he was ten years old. It was said to occur most commonly in February and March. In some villages the disease was called dákráj, but more usually basanta. The Commissioners print a return, from which it appears that between 14th June and 5th December 1870, in 95 villages, 2205 cattle were attacked, and 1441 or 65°3 died. A

second disease called khurá, to be identified with foot-and-mouth disease, was also stated to be of common occurrence; but it very rarely proves fatal. I gather from another source that there was an outbreak of cattle-murrain in the spring of 1864, shortly after the Alípur exhibition, and that on this occasion the Nawáb Názím lost several valuable animals.

Considerable interest is attached to the first recorded outbreak of mátá or rinderpest at Murshidábád in 1832, from the circumstance that it was attempted at that time to find in the pustules which covered the diseased cattle a substitute for vaccine lymph. Dr. Macpherson, then Superintendent of Vaccination at Murshidábád, apparently relying upon the circumstance that the natives applied to the disease among the cattle the same term which they used for human small-pox, determined that it could be nothing else than natural cow-pox. He selected some cows suffering under the malady, clothed them in blankets, and removing the crusts which he found developed on the udder on the ninth and tenth days of the disease, used these to vaccinate children, and succeeded in producing a vesicle, to all appearance vaccine. From the vesicle so created, lymph was taken, sent all over India, and used for vaccination. This discovery took the medical men of India by surprise, and produced no little agitation at the time. Efforts were made elsewhere to imitate Dr. Macpherson's practice, until the disastrous results that followed upon the experiments in Sylhet overthrew the entire hypothesis on which it was founded.

FAMILY HISTORY OF THE SETHS OF MURSHIDABAD.—In some of my Accounts of other Districts, there have been given brief sketches of the family history of the leading landowners. In Murshidábád, the banking house of Jagat Seth occupies a position of hereditary dignity superior to that of any zamíndár; and its history is connected with some of the most critical revolutions in Bengal, both during the Muhammadan and English rule. The Seths have been not unworthily called the Rothschilds of India,' and Burke said. of them that their transactions were as extensive as those of the Bank of England.' The following paragraphs are partly based upon materials supplied by the present representative of the family, through the intervention of Rájá Prasanna Náráyan Deb Bahádur, the Nizámat Díwán of the Nawáb. It must, however, be recollected, that all the original family papers are said to have been destroyed by a fire in the beginning of the present century.

The Seths do not trace their antiquity further back than for about two hundred years. They are of Rájput descent, belonging to the well-known tribe of Márwárís, the Jews of India, as they have been called, whose hereditary enterprise carries them as traders to every part of the country. Like their tribe-fellows, they were originally Jains, of the Svetámbara sect, and some of them have been munificent donors to the temples on Párasnáth hill. (See the Statistical Account of Hazáribágh District, vol. xvi. pp. 223-227.) The original home of the family is said to have been at Nagar, a town of some importance in the Rájput State of Jodhpur. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, Hirá-nand Saho, to whom the Seths refer their ancestry, migrated from his native city in search of wealth, as so many Rájput and Hindustání families have done. He settled at Patná, which was then the second greatest emporium in the lower valley of the Ganges, and the site of factories of the Portuguese, Dutch, and English. To Hirá-nand Saho were born seven sons, who seem to have all followed their father's profession, and established banking firms in different parts of India. The eldest of the seven, Mánik Chand, who betook himself to Dacca, is regarded as the founder of the Seth family. Dacca was at that time the seat of the Muhammadan Government, and the natural centre of attraction to an enterprising man. When Murshid Kulí Khán, in I7o4, transferred the capital to Murshidábád, the banker followed his patron, and became the most influential personage at the new court. It would seem that Mánik Chand was the right-hand man of the Nawáb in all his financial reforms, and also in his private affairs. The establishment of the mint at Murshidábád, by which the city was conspicuously marked as the new capital of Bengal, was rendered easy by the command of specie possessed by the banker. The same qualification perhaps suggested, as it certainly facilitated, the fundamental change introduced by Murshid Kulí Khán, in accordance with which the zamíndárs, or other collectors of revenue, paid the land tax by monthly instalments at Murshidábád. These payments passed through the hands of Mánik Chand, and it was through him also that the annual revenue of one kror and fifty lákhs of rupees (£1,500,000) was annually remitted to the Mughul Emperor; whether in specie, as stated by Stewart (History of Bengal, p. 238), or in drafts and orders, drawn by Mánik Chand on the corresponding firm of his brother in Dehli, as is suggested in the family history. The coffers of Mánik Chand were, moreover, the depositary of the