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BETUL.

331

Among

these tribes a suitor will serve

marriages with drinking bouts.

manner of Jacob. Both Kurkus and Gonds live from hand to mouth, and often suffer great privations in seasons of scarcity. Classified according to occupation, the Census Report divided the male population into six main classes, as follow (i) Professional class, including Government officers and the learned

for his wife for a fixed period, after the



professions, class,

and

3212;

domestic servants,

(2)

etc.,

including merchants, traders, carriers,

1129; 1673

etc.,

pastoral classes, including gardeners, 74,823

artisan,

and

other

unproductive

industrial

(comprising

classes,

7104

13,721

labourers,

including children), 59,868.



and





(5)

(6)

commercial

(3)

(4) agricultural

manufacturing, indefinite

52,764

and

unspecified,

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Only five towns in the District Division into Town and Country have a population exceeding two thousand Betul, 4693 ; Multai, 3423 ; Badnur, 2881 ; Bhesdehi, 2653 ; and Atner, 2429. Townships of one to two thousand inhabitants, 24 ; from two hundred to a.

thousand, 505 Agriculture



villages of less than

— Of the

two hundred inhabitants, 638.

3904 square miles, only 991 w'ere 1880; and of the portion lying waste, 278 miles were returned as grazing land, and 821 as available for tillage 10,470 acres were returned in the same year as irrigated, entirely by private enterprise. The Government assessment is at the rate of 7d. per acre of the cultivated land, or 3^d. on the cultivable land. The chief crops consist of wheat and pulses. Wheat is sown in October. No manure is used, and the fields are very rarely irrigated. The grain ripens early in the spring. In the hills, the villagers formerly practised the ddhya system of cultivation. After clearing a piece of ground on a slope or on the edge of a stream, they cover the surface with logs of wood, and these again with brushwood. Before the rains, but not until the hot weather has thoroughly dried it, they, set the wood on fire finally, after the first fall of rain, they scatter the seed among the ashes, or, where the ground is steep, throw it in a lump along the top of the plot to be washed to its place by the rains. This practice has recently been stopped, owing to the indiscriminate destruction of valuable forest timber it caused. The acreage under the different crops was thus returned in 1880-81 Wheat, 117,376 acres rice, 17,850 other foodgrains, 412,921; oil-seeds, 83,384; sugar-cane, 8319; cotton, 1606; .

total area of

cultivated in







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other fibres, 3291; tobacco, 89; vegetables, 2193; other crops, 154. The average number of acres cultivated in 1881 by each head of the adult agricultural population (124,702, or 40^90 per cent, of the District population), was 12 acres; the amount of Government land revenue, and local cesses, levied

on the landholders, was ;^2o,3i6



and the amount

of rental, including cesses, paid by the cultivators, was ;j£'43,o 85, or an

average of iid. per cultivated

acre.

The

average rent per acre of