102 THE HIGHLANDS OF CE:NTRAL INDIA. 



is a little soil, and a plentiful growth of grass, timber, 

 and bamboos. He prefers a place where young straight 

 teak poles grow thick and strong, as they are easiest 

 to cut, and produce most ashes when burnt. He cuts 

 every stick that stands on the selected plot, except 

 the largest trunks, which he lops of their branches 

 and girdles so that they may shortly die. This he 

 does early in the dry season (January to March), and 

 leaves the timber thickly piled on the ground to dry 

 in the torrid sun of the hot season. By the end of 

 May it will be just like tinder, and he then sets fire 

 to it and burns it as nearly as he can to ashes. With 

 all his labour, however (and he works hard at this 

 spasmodic sort of toil), he will not be able to work 

 all the logs into position to get burnt ; and at the end 

 of a week he will rest from his labour, and contemplate 

 with satisfaction the three or four acres of valuable 

 teak forest he has reduced to a heap of ashes, strewn 

 with the charred remains of the Jarger limbs and trunks. 

 He now rakes his ashes evenly over the field and waits 

 for rain, which in due season generally comes. He 

 then takes a few handfuls of the coarse ejrain he subsists 

 on and tiings them into the ashes, broadcast if the 

 ground be tolerably level ; if steep, then in a line 

 at the top, so as to be washed down by the rain. 

 The principal grains are Kodon [Paspalwn), Kiitki 

 {Panicum), and coarse rice. But nearly all the ordinary 

 crops raised in the plains during the autumn season 

 are also grown more or less in these dlnja clear- 

 ings, as they are called, though usually from greatly 

 degenerate seed, the produce of which is often scarcely 

 recognisable as the same species. A few pumpkins and 

 creeping beans are usually grown about the houses in 



