3^ 



The Neilgherry Mountains. 



[No. 34, 



exterminate the bad grass out of his land, and replace it by grass from 

 good mixed seed from home, which experience (on a small scale) has 

 shown to thrive well on these Hills. Clover and lucerne also flou- 

 rish here, especially on lands not more than 6,000 feet elevated above 

 the level of the sea — in fact under a proper system there never could 

 be any want of dry as well as green food for fattening stock, felt in 

 this district. 



Fuel likely to become There is another subject which before closing 

 scarce on the Hills, ^.j^-^ chapter I am anxious to draw attention to, 

 and that is the supply of firewood obtained from the woods with which 

 the surface of the Hills is dotted. This may at a casual glance ap- 

 pear comparatively inexhaustible, but I am satisfied it is not so, and 

 that to preserve in localities, where it may be called available for ge- 

 neral use, a provision for future years, some measures of conservation 

 should be adopted; more especially should European troops with the 

 host of Natives who will follow them, be permanently located on the 

 Neilgherries. At present, while hundreds of trees are being felled 

 daily, not one is planted, and it is reasonable to anticipate, that unless 

 some system is adopted to conserve and renew the woods, particular- 

 ly in the neighbourhood of the projected barracks, government will 

 before long be put to a heavy expense in supplying the troops with 

 this necessary of life from a distance. 



, ..... The modes of cultivation adopted by the aeri- 



Modes of cultivation. i J b 



cultural Hill tribes have beeji, already, so fre- 

 quently adverted to in the preceding chapter on productions, that it 

 will be only necessary here briefly to reviev/ them. I have described 

 their system of agriculture as radically bad : and it is so for these 

 reasons ; first, because the land is not properly ploughed ; secondly, 

 because it is not properly manured and dressed ; and thirdly, because 

 no change is ever made in the seed which they sow in it; not even to 

 the extent of bringing it from neighbouring villages, the Burghers 

 sowing the same seed over and over again in the same soil, until an 

 inevitable deterioration takes place in the product. 



„, , , , The plough used is a most wretched imple- 



Floughs very bad. i o f 



ment, the share being almost invariably a piece 

 of pointed wood, of a tough description, hardened in the fire, and not 

 ehod with iron, or any other metal. Owing to this, and to the clum- 

 sy form of the plough, which gives the man at the tail but little power 

 over the instrument, the land is not furrowed or turned up beyood a 



