PRIMITIVE TREATMENT OF FORESTS. 67 
languages. ‘They are a better-looking people than the 
slaves, but they are ill-clothed, nasty, and apparently 
ill-fed. They collect drugs for the trader, to whom they 
are let; and receive from him a subsistence, when they 
can procure for him anything of value. He has the exclu- 
sive right of purchasing all that they have for sale, and of 
supplying them with salt and other necessaries. ‘A great 
part of their food consists of wild yams (dioscoreas), which 
they dig when they have nothing to give to the trader 
for rice. They cultivate some small spots after the Cotu- 
cadu fashion, both on their own account and on that of the 
neighbouring farmers, who receive the produce, and give 
the Malasirs hire. The articles cultivated in this manner 
are ragi (cynosurus corocanus), avary (dolichos lablab), and 
tonda (ricinus palma Christi). They are also hired to cut 
timber and firewood. In this province they pay nothing 
to Government.’ 
Writing of Cherical in Malabar, he tells:—‘The hill 
lands that have been cleared are called Parumba, as in the 
south; but there are certain hills that are covered with 
woods and bushes, and called ponna, The natural produce 
of these is of no value ; but once in ten years the bushes 
are cut and burned. The ground is then hoed, and sown 
with a kind of rice called cotwilla ; along with which are 
intermixed some tovary (cytisus cajan), and cotton. In 
fact, this cultivation is the same with the Cotu-cadu of 
Mysore ; and is said to be that which is chiefly used in 
the interior parts of Cherical and Cotay-Hutty ; that is to 
say, in the northern parts of Malayala, where the cultiva- 
tion of the valleys is much neglected. This kind of land 
pays four-tenths of the produce as rent (varum), of which 
one-half is equal to the negad:, or land tax. 
Of Cherical he tells that ‘ all the eastern parts are con- 
tinuous forest, interspersed occasionally by slips of low, 
rich rice-lands from 100 to 300 yards broad.’ And again: 
‘after deducting the third part of Cherical, too barren for 
cultivation, and the small quantity of low rice land, all the 
