The whole stock is essentially agricultural. Likewise, the agriculture is peculiar. We may explain it by the term _erratic_. They "never cultivate the same field beyond the second year, or remain in the same village beyond the fourth to sixth year. After the lapse of four or five years they frequently return to their old fields and resume their cultivation, if in the interim the jungle has grown well, and they have not been anticipated by others, for there is no pretence of appropriation other than possessory, and if, therefore, another party have preceded them, or, if the slow growth of the jungle give no sufficient promise of a good stratum of ashes for the land when cleared by fire, they move on to another site, new or old. If old, they resume the identical fields they tilled before, but never the old houses or site of the old village, that being deemed unlucky. In general, however, they prefer new land to old, and having still abundance of unbroken forest around them, they are in constant movement, more especially as, should they find a new spot prove unfertile, they decamp after the first harvest is got in." _Arva in annos mutant et superest ager._ This passage is explained by their customs. In respect to their social constitution, they dwell in small communities of from ten to forty houses; each of which community is under a _grà_ or head. This is Hindú--except that as the Hindú villages are both larger and more permanent, the functionaries, in addition to the _headman_, are more numerous. This is noted, because the difference in the two sorts of village government seems to be one of _degree_ rather than _kind_. And now comes more in the way of classification. The Bodo are Kachars, or the Kachars are Bodo. Their languages are the same, so are their gods, so is their name; since Kachar is a Hindú, and no native term--the native name (_i.e._, of the Kachars) being _Bodo_. On the other hand, the _Hindú_ name of the Bodo is Mech. Whoever looks to a map will find that the outline of the Bodo area is very deeply indented; implying either a great original irregularity of area, or great subsequent displacement. Now follow the Garo. One fourth--fifteen out of sixty--of the words of Mr. Brown's Garo vocabulary is Bodo. The inference? That the Bodo and Garo are in the same category. What is this? Mr. Hodgson makes both Tamulian or Indian. In my own mind both are Burmese. But be this as it may, one fact is certain; _viz._, that a transition between the tongues of the Indian and the tongues of the Indo-Chinese peninsula exists, and that the lines of demarcation which divide them are less broad and trenchant than is generally supposed. The Dhimal bring us to Sikkim. The dominant nation of Sikkim are-- _The Lepchas._--Their language also is monosyllabic; but it is Tibetan rather than Burmese. They are a Sikkim rather than a British Indian population.