The jungle Kanikars have no permanent abode, but shift about from one part of the forest to another. Their settlements, composed of lowly huts built of bamboo and reeds, are abandoned when they suffer from fever, or are harassed by wild beasts, or when the soil ceases to be productive. The settlements are generally situated, away from the tracks of elephants, on steep hill slopes, which are terraced and planted with useful trees. In their system of cultivation the Kanikars first clear a patch of forest, and then set fire to it. The ground is sown with hardly any previous tillage. When, after two or three years, the land diminishes in productiveness, they move onto another part of the forest, and follow the same rough and ready method of cultivation. Thus one patch of ground after another is used for agricultural purposes, until a whole tract of forest is cleared. But the Kanikars have now to a large extent abandoned this kind of migratory cultivation, because, according to the forest rules, forests may not be set fire to or trees felled at the unrestricted pleasure of individuals. They cultivate various kinds of cereals and pulses, as well as tapioca (Manihot utilissima), sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), ganja (Indian hemp), and tobacco. Each settlement now has a forest block assigned to it for cultivation, with which other tribes are not allowed to interfere, and wherein the Kanikars are allowed to fell, clear, and grow their crops. They do not pay anything in the way of tax to the Government. Once a year they go in a group to visit the Maharaja at Trivandrum, and he "always receives them most kindly, accepting the nuzzur they offer in the shape of the bamboo plantain with large though few fruits, a parcel of Muttucheri hill rice, bamboo joints containing different varieties of honey, and virukachattam or a parcel of civet. The customary modes of court address, and the prescribed court etiquette are alike unknown to them, and the Maharaja, pleased with their simplicity and unaffected homage, rewards them with presents of cloth, money, salt, and tobacco, with which they return satisfied to their jungle home." The Rev. S. Mateer notes that he had difficulty in persuading the Kanikars to part with a sucker of the bamboo plantain, as they fancied it must be reserved for the use of the Maharaja alone.