The statement that an increase of famines would be sure to ensue from the causes above indicated is amply corroborated by the facts.

There is no evidence to show that droughts have increased, but there can be no doubt that in comparatively recent times famines and scarcities have.

And in looking over the list of famines from 1769 to 1877, I find that, comparing the first 84 years of the period in question with the years from then up to 1877, famines have more than doubled in number, and scarcities, causing great anxiety to the State, seem certainly to be increasing.

That the latter are so we have strong evidence in Mysore, and in looking over the annual addresses of the Dewan at the meeting of the Representative Assembly of Mysore, I am struck with the frequent allusion to scarcities and grave apprehensions of famine.

In his address of 1881, only four years after the great famine of 1876-77, the Dewan refers to "the period of intense anxiety through which the Government and the people have passed owing to the recent failure of the rains.