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The quarterly magazine called "Karhana" has been changed to a monthly and every effort has been made to make the content easily assimilated by farmers and all sorts of illustrations have been used to make agricultural improve ment understandable to the people. Radio programmes were arranged once a week to keep the farmers all over the country informed about up-to-date methods of farming and writers were encouraged to improve their scripts by the offer of three different prizes. THE DEPARTMENT OF SOIL AND WATER This department is chiefly concerned with the constant supply of water and the conservation of soil. During the fourth year of the Plan the Department repaired and improved the Ajmir Canal in Kataghan Province to keep irrigation water flowing for the sugarbeet fields in Baghlan and other adjoining areas in co-operation with the F.A.O. experts. The Department also repaired and improved the Archi Canal which irrigates thousands of acres of fertile land in Kataghan and surveyed the area for the building of another canal in Alchin which would irrigate 7,000 additional acres by means of a pumping station. Efforts have been made to re-dig the old canals destroyed in Nangarhar Province for the purpose of irrigating vast areas of fallow land. Hundreds of small pumping stations are to be distributed soon among farmers in Katawaz and Ghazni where the scarcity of water is acutely felt and irrigation water has to be obtained from deep wells. The Department has also made con siderable progress in connection with the analysis of various samples of soil from various parts of the country. For example, the experts of the Department have collected 400 samples of various soils from Kataghan Province, 16 from Badakhshan, 118 from Karabagh, 120 from Nangarhar and 100 from private farms in various places at the owners' request. The Arch of Bist in Girishk