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Updated: June 23, 2025
As Kumaon has within its borders a cold, a temperate, and a tropical climate, it has a great variety of produce, and when its capabilities are more fully turned to account this variety will be greatly increased. Most of the grains found in the plains are grown in the hills. The warmer parts of the country produce superior oranges in abundance, and there is also a good supply of walnuts.
One of our number was a converted pundit of Almora, who spoke to the people in a way I thought eminently fitted to make a favourable impression. During our residence in Kumaon we had many opportunities of observing the condition and habits of the people. I have mentioned the new resources opened up to them, and yet it must be acknowledged that many are poor.
Kumaon is very mountainous, with as great irregularity as if the land had been fluid, had in the midst of a storm been suddenly solidified, and had then received its permanent shape.
Their services had been rewarded with large tracts of land, fiefs of the spear, if we may use an expression drawn from an analogous state of things, in that fertile plain through which the Ramgunga flows from the snowy heights of Kumaon to join the Ganges. In the general confusion which followed the death of Aurungzebe, the warlike colony became virtually independent.
I must defer to a later period of this work what I have to say about Kumaon, to which we paid several visits, and where we spent the last years of our Indian life. Our journeying to and from Kumaon in 1847 was partly over the ground traversed on our trip to Agra in 1842-43, and partly over new ground, as one may see by looking at the map of Northern India.
In Kumaon, on the other hand, the great majority are strict Hindus, worshippers of the Hindu gods, and scrupulous observers of caste rules.
The last female moth emerged, I think, about the end of September. These cocoons had hibernated twice, as has been the case with other Indian species. I had Indian cocoons which hibernated even three times. Attacus cynthia, from the province of Kumaon. With the Atlas cocoons, a large quantity of Cynthia cocoons were collected in the province of Kumaon.
Notwithstanding the extension of cultivation and the increase of population in Kumaon, we may travel for many miles over hill and forest and not see a trace of man's presence. Cover for wild beasts has been somewhat abridged, but it is still sufficient to shelter them, and to make it unlikely they can be exterminated.
It is already known that it feeds on several species of trees, besides the ailantus, such as the laburnum, lilac, cherry, and, I think, also on the castor-oil plant; the common barberry has, therefore, to be added to the above food plants. These Kumaon Cynthia cocoons were somewhat smaller and much darker in color than those of the acclimatized Cynthia reared on the ailantus.
In times of drought the Guanches of Teneriffe led their sheep to sacred ground, and there they separated the lambs from their dams, that their plaintive bleating might touch the heart of the god. In Kumaon a way of stopping rain is to pour hot oil in the left ear of a dog. The animal howls with pain, his howls are heard by Indra, and out of pity for the beast's sufferings the god stops the rain.
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