In the highlands of Kabul edible rhubarb is an important local luxury. The plants grow wild in the mountains. The bleached rhubarb, which has a very delicate flavour, is altered by covering the young leaves, as they sprout from the soil, with loose stones or an empty jar. The leaf-stalks are gathered by the neighbouring hill people, and carried down for sale. Bleached and unbleached rhubarb are both largely consumed, both raw and cooked.
The walnut and edible pine-nut are both wild growths, which are exported.
The sanjît (Elaeaguns orientalis), common on the banks of watercourses, furnishes an edible fruit. An orchis found in the mountain yields the dried tuber which affords the nutritious mucilage called salep; a good deal of this goes to India.
Pistacia khinjak affords a mastic. The fruit, mixed with its resin, is used for food by the Achakzais in Southern Afghanistan. The true pistachio is found only on the northern frontier; the nuts are imported from Badakshan and Kunduz.
Mushrooms and other fungi are largely used as food, especially by the Hindus of the towns, to whom they supply a substitute for meat.
Manna, of at least two kinds, is sold in the bazaars. One, called turanjbîn, appears to exude, in small round tears, from the camel-thorn, and also from the dwarf tamarisk; the other, sir-kasht, in large grains and irregular masses or cakes with bits of twig imbedded, is obtained from a tree which the natives call siah chob (black wood), thought by Bellew to be a Fraxinus or Ornus.
In most parts of the country there are two harvests, as generally in India. One of these, called by the Afghans bahârak, or the spring crop, is sown in the end of autumn and reaped in summer. It consists of wheat, barley and a variety of lentils. The other, called pâizah or tîrmâi, Agriculture.the autumnal, is sown in the end of spring, and reaped in autumn. It consists of rice, varieties of millet and sorghum, of maize, Phaseolus Mungo, tobacco, beet, turnips, &c. The loftier regions have but one harvest.
Wheat is the staple food over the greater part of the country. Rice is not largely distributed. In much of the eastern mountainous country bâjra (Holcus spicatus) is the chief grain. Most English and Indian garden-stuffs are cultivated; turnips in some places very largely, as cattle food.
The growth of melons, water-melons and other cucurbitaceous plants is reckoned very important, especially near towns; and this crop counts for a distinct harvest.
Sugar-cane is grown only in the rich plains; and though cotton is grown in the warmer tracts, most of the cotton cloth is imported.
Madder is an important item of the spring crop in Ghazni and Kandahar districts, and generally over the west, and supplies the Indian demand. It is said to be very profitable, though it takes three years to mature. Saffron is grown and exported. The castor-oil plant is everywhere common, and furnishes most of the oil of the country. Tobacco is grown very generally; that of Kandahar has much repute, and is exported to India and Bokhara. Two crops of leaves are taken.
Lucerne and a trefoil called shaftal form important fodder crops in the western parts of the country, and, when irrigated, are said to afford ten or twelve cuttings in the season. The komal (Prangos pabularia) is abundant in the hill country of Ghazni, and is said to extend through the Hazara country to Herat. It is stored for winter use, and forms an excellent fodder. Others are derived from the Holcus sorghum, and from two kinds of panick. It is common to cut down the green wheat and barley before the ear forms, for fodder, and the repetition of this, with barley at least, is said not to injure the grain crop. Bellew gives the following statement of the manner in which the soil is sometimes worked in the Kandahar district:—Barley is sown in November; in March and April it is twice cut for fodder; in June the grain is reaped, the ground is ploughed and manured and sown with tobacco, which yields two cuttings. The ground is then prepared for carrots and turnips, which are gathered in November or December.
Of great moment are the fruit crops. All European fruits are produced profusely, in many varieties and of excellent quality. Fresh or preserved, they form a principal food of a large class of the people, and the dry fruit is largely exported. In the valleys of Kabul mulberries are dried, and packed in skins for winter use, This mulberry cake is often reduced to flour, and used as such, forming in some valleys the main food of the people.
Grapes are grown very extensively, and the varieties are very numerous. The vines are sometimes trained on trellises, but most frequently over ridges of earth 8 or 10 ft. high. The principal part of the garden lands in villages round Kandahar is vineyard, and the produce must be enormous.
Open canals are usual in the Kabul valley, and in eastern Afghanistan generally; but over all the western parts of the country much use is made of the karez, which is a subterranean aqueduct uniting the waters of several springs, and conducting their combined volume to the surface at a lower level.
As regards vertebrate zoology, Afghanistan lies on the frontier of three regions, viz. the Eurasian, the Ethiopian (to which region Baluchistan seems to belong) and the Indo-Malayan. Hence it naturally partakes somewhat of the forms of each, but is in the main Eurasian.Fauna.
Felidae.—F. catus, F. chaus (both Eurasian); F. Caracal (Eur., Ind., Eth.), about Kandahar; a small leopard, stated to be found almost all over the country, perhaps rather the cheetah (F. jubatus, Ind. and Eth.); F. pardus, the common leopard (Eth. and Ind.). The tiger exists in Afghan Turkestan.
Canidae.—The jackal (C. aureus, Eur., Ind., Eth.) abounds on the Helmund and Argand-ab, and probably elsewhere. Wolves (C. Bengalensis) are formidable in the wilder tracts, and assemble in troops on the snow, destroying cattle and sometimes attacking single horsemen. The hyena (H. striata, Africa to India) is common. These do not hunt in packs, but will sometimes singly attack a bullock; they and the wolves make havoc among sheep. A favourite feat of the boldest of the young men of southern Afghanistan is to enter the hyena's den, single-handed, muffle and tie him. There are wild dogs, according to Elphinstone and Conolly. The small Indian fox (Vulpes Bengalensis) is found; also V. flavescens, common to India and Persia, the skin of which is much used as a fur.
Mustelidae.—Species of mungoose (Herpestes), species of Otter, Mustela erminea, and two ferrets, one of them with tortoise-shell marks, tamed by the Afghans to keep down vermin; a marten (M. flavigula, Indian).
Bears are two: a black one, probably Ursus torquatus; and one of a dirty yellow, U. Isabellinus, both Himalayan species.
Ruminants.—Capra aegagrus and C. megaceros; a wild sheep (Ovis cycloceros or Vignei); Gazella subgutturosa—these are often netted in batches when they descend to drink at a stream; G. dorcas perhaps; Cervus Wallichii, the Indian barasingha, and probably some other Indian deer, in the north-eastern mountains.
The wild hog (Sus scrofa) is found on the lower Helmund. The wild ass, Gorkhar of Persia (Equus onager), is frequent on the sandy tracts in the south-west.
The Himalayan varieties of the markhor and ibex are abundant in Kafiristan.
Talpidae.—A mole, probably Talpa Europaea; Sorex Indicus; Erinaceus collaris (Indian), and Er. auritus (Eurasian).
Bats believed to be Phyllorhinus cineraceus (Punjab species), Scotophilus Bellii (W. India), Vesp. auritus and V. barbastellus, both found from England to India.
Rodentia.—A squirrel (Sciurus Syriacus?); Mus Indicus and M. Gerbellinus; a jerboa (Dipus telum?); Alactaga Bactriana; Gerbillus Indicus, and G. erythrinus (Persian and Indian); Lagomys Nepalensis, a Central Asian species. A hare, probably L. ruficaudatus.
Birds.—The largest list of Afghan birds that we know of is given by Captain Hutton in the J. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. xvi. pp. 775 seq.; but it is confessedly far from complete. Of 124 species in that list, 5 are pronounced to be Eurasian, 17 Indian, 10 both Eurasian and Indian, 1 (Turtur risorius) Eur., Ind. and Eth.; and 1 only, Carpodacus (Bucanetes) crassirostris, peculiar to the country. Afghanistan appears to be, during the breeding season, the retreat of a variety of Indian and some African (desert) forms, whilst in winter the avifauna becomes overwhelmingly Eurasian.
Reptiles.—The following particulars are from Gray:—Lizards—Pseudopus gracilis (Eur.), Argyrophis Horsfieldii, Salea Horsfieldii, Calotes Maria, C. versicolor, C. minor, C. Emma, Phrynocephalus Tickelii—all Indian forms. A tortoise (Testudo Horsfieldii) appears to be peculiar to Kabul. There are apparently no salamanders or tailed Amphibia. The frogs are partly Eurasian, partly Indian; and the same may be said of the fish, but they are as yet most imperfectly known.
The camel is of a more robust and compact breed than the tall beast used in India, and is more carefully tended. The two-humped Bactrian camel is commonly used in the Oxus regions, but is seldom seen, near the Indian frontier. Horses form a staple export to India.. The best of these, however, are reserved for the Afghan cavalry. Those exported to India. are usually bred in Maimana and other places in Afghan
