Page:Madras District Gazetteers - Anantapur.pdf/27

by surface decomposition, in others te be the impregnation of argillaceous earth with organic matter, or an ancient forest humus, and in yet others to have been deposited at the bottom of lakes or lagoons. It contains a larger proportion of organic matter than most other soils, though the percentage is not really high, and a consider- able admixture of carbonate of lime, and its properties of retaining moisture, of cracking deeply in every direction in the dry.weather and becoming impassably sticky in the wet are well known, Several theories have been propounded to account for its colour. Dr. Leather has recently disproved the idea that this is due to organic matter by showing that boiling with concentrated sulphuric acid has little effect upon it, but leaves a dark brown residue which is appar- ently due to some mineral peculiar to this soil, Outside Gooty and Tadpatri, as the figures given above will show, the soil is for the most part red, and, while in Hindupur and Madakasira some two-thirds of the assessed area is covered with the more fertile red loams, the barren red sandy land predominates elsewhere and in the four taluks in the central division of the district occupies from 45 per cent.(in Anantapur) to 70 percent.(in Kalyandrug) of the country. In this area, as wil] be seen in more detail in Chapter IV (p. 41) below, from 74 to 88 per cent. of the assessed dry land pays an assessment as low as four annas or less per acre, “ Over a great part of these taluks,” it has been said, “the poverty of the upland soils beggars description. If the ground is not covered with rocks and boulders, it most resembles the surface of a road newly laid with stones and not yet rolled. Acre after acre, and mile after mile, it is difficult to put the point of a walking-stick on anything which is not a fragment of white quartz, grey granite, or red gravel.” Of all this miserable area Kalyandrug is the most wretched. The contrast between it and the more southern taluks of Hindupur and Mada- kasira is most marked. In the latter there are numerous small gardens of areca and cocoanut palms in which also betel-vines, oranges, limes, jack-fruit, custard-apples and plantains are grown, while round the villages are prosperous-looking patches of saffron, tobacco, chillies, onions and other vegetables. Even here, however, there are numerous tracts of exceedingly poor soil.

The rainfall of the district is referred to in some detail in Chapter VIII below. It is less than that of any other district in the Presidency except Bellary, averaging under 23 inches annually. The driest zone is the tract comprising the three central taluks of Anantapur, Dharmavaram and Kalyandrug, where the fall is less than 21 inches.

Anantapur is one of the few district head-quarters at which no systematic meteorological observations (other than the record of