128 KUMARI CULTIVATION. 



have supplied the market at Bombay with firewood for years. 

 The same fact has been noticed by Mr Forbes, my head assistant. 

 " I have referred above to the manner in which the practice 

 of kumari cultivation has increased of late years. It was formerly 

 confined entirely to the race of wild and uncivilized people 

 who dwelt habitually in the jungles ; but others have since 

 taken it up, and many of the ryots from the plains, and others 

 who have come from the Mysore and Mahratta country, have 

 adopted it as a means of livelihood. There is little doubt also 

 that the prohibition of this practice in the Mysore country will 

 drive a great many of those who have carried on their operations 

 in the forests of that country into Canara, and the destruction will 

 thus be carried on more rapidly than ever, until the woods are 

 finally exhausted. Independent of these considerations, it is not 

 a pursuit which it is at all desirable to encourage the people newly 

 to engage in. It has no doubt some attraction for those who 

 are impatient of control, and are fond of a wild roving life ; but it 

 leads to unsettled habits, and takes many away from the regular 

 cultivation of a fixed spot." 



(B.) Mr G. S. Forbes, Sub-Collector of Canara. 



" The third source of consumption I have to mention arises 

 from the cultivation of kumari, which, as you are aware, is carried 

 on upon tracts where the trees have been previously felled and 

 burnt. The value of timber thus destroyed by one man, calculating 

 it by the number of logs it might have yielded, is at least twenty 

 times as great as the value of the crop of ragi obtained in the 

 two years that cultivation is continued ; and the amount of duty 

 which the trees would have yielded, if exported as firewood, bears 

 the same proportion to the paltry sum paid to Government for 

 the clearing. To abolish this species of cultivation would de- 

 prive a great number of persons of their accustomed means of 

 support, and I have only therefore to suggest that the cultivation 

 of kumari be forbidden in all localities where trees for timber or 

 firewood are likely to be felled ; such localities may be determined 

 by the means of carriage which exist. On hills and on tracts 



