Proceedings of the Hon'ble the Lieutenant.Governor of the Punjab, in the Revenue and Agricultural (General)
Department, No. 716 S., dated 30th July 1898.
READ—
Letter No. 1196, dated 9th July 1898, from the Director of Land Records and Agriculture,
Punjab, being the Annual Provincial Report of the Civil Veterinary Department for
the year 1897-98.
REMARKS.—In accordance with the orders contained in the letter of the
Government of India, No. 1608/118.4, dated 15th October 1895, this report is prepared
by the Director of Land Records and Agriculture for the Province as a whole from
the two separate reports submitted by the Superintendents of the Civil Veterinary
Department in the North and South Punjab. The Director has not, however, as
was intended by Government, attached to his report any extracts from the reports
of the two Superintendents. The orders of 1895 were issued because it was
feared that the two Circle reports would be too bulky for printing. It is not
necessary to go to the opposite extreme and limit the scope of the report to the
Director's remarks and the statistical tables. The Lieutenant-Governor will
therefore be glad to see included in future reports any extracts from the reports
of the Veterinary Superintendents which may contain matter of interest.
2. Another point to which the Lieutenant-Governor would call the
Director's attention is that it will render the report more useful to Government
and, His Honor believes, more interesting to the public, if the statistics are dealt
with for the Province as a whole instead of, as for instance in paragraphs 3 and 4,
for each administrative circle separately. Except when there is some special point
to be brought out by a comparison of the results reported from the North and
South Punjab Circles respectively, it is unnecessary in a Provincial report to
separately summarize the statistics of each, merely because they constitute two
separate Civil Veterinary charges.
3. In addition to stallions kept by District Boards the returns again
include animals owned by private persons and the Court of Wards, but the
Lieutenant-Governor is pleased to notice that in each case the statistics have
been separately given as was requested in last year's Review. The total
number of horse and pony stallions for the whole Punjab during the year under
report was 35 and 55 respectively, as against 49 and 54 last year. The
decrease in the number of horse stallions is noticeable. It is to be accounted
for chiefly by casualties and rejections, but 4 stallions of this class were
transferred to the head ' pony stallions' as compared with I transferred from
the latter class to the former, so that the actual decrease is 11 only, and it
would appear from Table A that 9 of these belonged to private persons.
4. The Superintendent of the Northern Circle reports that there exists a
considerable demand for the services of pony stallions, and judging from the
figures given in the table in paragraph 7, which show the number of pony mares
to be nearly three times greater than that of the larger class of animals, it is easy
to understand why this should be so. The Lieutenant-Governor presumes that
it has been duly considered by the professional officers concerned whether
it is a good policy to encourage District Boards to meet this demand, and
whether the supply of stallions of the pony size is likely to advance the
objects set forth in paragraph 9 of the Government of India Circular No. 18/54,
dated 25th May 1892, the principal of which His Honor understands to
be the gradual increase in size of the indigenous stock until the mares are raised
to the standard accepted by officers branding for admission to Imperial stallions.
5. The question of mule-breeding was referred to in last year's review,
and His Honor expressed the hope that any opportunity that might present itself
for the extension of mule-breeding through the agency of District Boards would
be taken advantage of. Nothing further has, up to the present, been effected in
this direction, and His Honor does not wish to press District Boards in the matter
so long as the Director of Land Records and the Veterinary Officers are satisfied