_Locality._--Mixed with the Bodo, in their most westerly locality, _i.e._ between the Konki and Dhorla. _Numbers._--According to Mr. Hodgson, about 15,000. _Authority._---Hodgson's _Dissertation on the Kocch, Bodo, and Dhimál._ BODO. _Locality._--The forest belt (not the mountains) in a circle round the Valley of Assam, from Tipperah S. E. to Morung, N.W. Mixed, in their most westerly localities with the Dhimál. _Synonym._--Mécch. _Name._--Native; the Mécch call themselves Bodo, and so do the Kachari. _Authority._--Same as for the Dhimál. The Bodo are the rudest division of the present group whereof we possess anything like a sufficient amount of detailed information; Mr. Hodgson's Dissertation being, perhaps, the best ethnological monograph existing. Hence, it is in the Bodo nation that, in the present state of our knowledge, we must study the general phenomena of the wilder Seriform tribes. In respect to their social development the Bodo are good examples of a very peculiar form. They are tillers of the soil, and (as such) agriculturists rather than hunters, fishers, or feeders of flocks and herds. But their agriculture is imperfect, and quasi-nomadic; since they are not fixed but erratic or migratory cultivators. They have no name for a village, no sheep, no oxen, no _fixed_ property in the soil. Like the ancient Germans, _arva in annos mutant, et superest ager_. They clear a jungle, crop it as long as it will yield an average produce, and then remove themselves elsewhere. "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."[18]