AGRICULTURE
29
fall, and is of very fair quality, while the second is hard and stony
and is called kankrili. The crops grown here are mostly bdjra and
moth, though the better of these two soils produces fair spring crops
where irrigation from wells is possible. On the banks of the Chambal
the soil is generally rich, and the bed of the 'river is cultivated to the
water's edge in the cold season. The principal crops here are wheat,
gram, and barley. Elsewhere, outside the Ddng, the soil is for the
most part light and sandy, but in places is associated with marl.
Excellent crops of b~jra, moth, and jôwdr are produced in the autumn;
and by means of irrigation, mostly from wells, good crops of wheat,
barley, and gram in the spring.
No very reliable agricultural statistics are available, but the area
ordinarily cultivated is about 26o square miles, or rather more than
one-fifth of the total area of the State. The principal crops are bdjra
and gram, the areas under which are usually about 58 and 57 square
miles respectively; moth occupies 36 square miles, wheat about 25,
barley nearly 2o, rice 18, and jowdr about 14 square miles. Cotton,
poppy, and sugar-cane are cultivated to a certain extent, and san-hemp
is extensively grown in the neighbourhood of the capital.
Karauli does not excel as a cattle-breeding country; the animals are
small though hardy, and attempts to introduce a larger kind have not
succeeded as they do not thrive on the rock-grown grass. The goats
alone are really good, and many are exported from the Ddng to Agra
and other places.
Of the total area cultivated, 61 square miles, or about 23 per cent.,
are generally irrigated. Well-irrigation is chiefly employed in the
country surrounding the capital. The total number of wells is said
to be 2,813, of which 1,645 are masonry; leathern buckets, drawn up
with a rope and pulley by bullocks moving- down an inclined plane, are
universally used for lifting the water. Tanks are the principal means
of irrigation in the rocky and hilly portions ; there are said to be 379
tanks of sorts in the State, but only 81 of them have masonry dams.
From tanks and streams water is raised by an apparatus termed dhenhli,
consisting of a wooden pole with a small earthen pot at one end and
a heavy weight at the other.
There are no real forests in the State and valuable timber trees are
scarce. Above the Chambal valley the commonest tree is the dhao
(Anogeissus pendula), but it is scarcely more than a shrub ; other
common trees are the dhdk (Butea frondosa), several kinds of acacia,
the cotton-tree (Bombax malabaricum), the sdl (Shores robusta), the
garjan (Dippterocarpus alatus), and the nzm (1Ylelia 4zadiraehta). Near
the Chambal in the Mandrael tahsil, and again in a grass reserve 20
miles north-east of the capital, a number of shisham trees (Dalbergia
Sissoo) are found together; but they are, it is believed, not of natural
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