as species now to science. They seem rather to be derivatives from species of the neighbourhood, i.e., tilaefolia and salvifolia, chap. I. Flora. rendered permanently dwarf hy the recurrence of annual forest fires. Arising from forms with well defined tree-like stems, they have lost this character but acquired an underground rootstock from which flowering shoots are sent up after each rainy season, but which fruit and wither before the period of grass burning. It is possible that Olax nana has been derived in the same way from Olax scandens.
Fauna. Domestic animals; cattle. The cattle of the district belong to no special local variety and no particular care is taken to improve them by judicious breeding. At the two shows which the District Agricultural Association has held up to date, the class of the exhibits was exceedingly high, but the majority of the prize-winners appear to have possessed a strain of the Nellore blood. The ordinary plough and milch cattle are bred locally or in some cases in the southern taluks are imported from Gódávari. The thousands of pack-cattle used by the Brinjáris in their trade with the interior are of the most ordinary variety. Two of the most important cattle-fairs on the plains are those at Kottavalasa and Alamanda in the Srungavarapukota taluk and at Tummapála just north of Anakápalle.
The Vizagapatam buffaloes, however, are remarkable animals of great size, bone and power. There are two varieties of them,namely, a light-coloured animal with very long, straight horns,which is indigenous, and a darker and more hairy breed, the horns of which are short and curve upwards. The latter, which are locally known as Kási (Benares) buffaloes, come from the Ganjám district and are largely bought at the fairs at Santakaviti and Sitarámpuram in Pálkonda taluk. Both these varieties are exceedingly useful, doing much of the cultivation in the heavier soils and dragging almost all the grain-carts which pour down in thousands from the Jeypore country to the plains whenever the price of food-stuffs is high in the latter. They are not used for pack-work, as they are such slow walkers.
The sheep of the plains are of the usual hairy brown and white breed, Sheep. but in parts of the Agency is found another variety called ráchamanda, which often produces two lambs at a birth and has a short coarse fleece. Though thousands of blankets are required annually by the hill people, the woolly sheep of the Deccan is unknown and no blankets are manufactured locally.
Goats. On thee plains the ordinary long-legged brown goats are numerous. In some parts of the hill taluks a breed exists which, if kept sheltered from cold and wet, brings forth three kids at a time.21
