in some places 25 ft. high. A fortress defended the north-west corner of the town, and was captured by the English from the Mahrattas in October 1803. It is now abandoned as a place of defence.
The District of Cuttack lies in the centre of Orissa, occupying the deltas of the Mahanadi and Brahmani, together with a hilly tract inland. Its area is 3654 sq. m. It consists of three physical divisions: first, a marshy woodland strip along the coast, from 3 to 30 m. in breadth; second, an intermediate stretch of rice plains; third, a broken hilly region, which forms the western boundary of the district. The marshy strip along the coast is covered with swamps and malaria-breeding jungles. Towards the sea the solid land gives place to a vast network of streams and creeks, whose sluggish waters are constantly depositing silt, and forming morasses or quicksands. Cultivation does not begin till the limits of this dismal region are passed. The intermediate rice plains stretch inland for about 40 m. and occupy the older part of the delta between the sea-coast strip and the hilly frontier. They are intersected by three large rivers, the Baitarani, Brahmani and Mahanadi. These issue in magnificent streams through three gorges in the frontier hills. The Cuttack delta is divided into two great valleys, one of them lying between the Baitarani and the Brahmani, the other between the Brahmani and the Mahanadi. The rivers having, by the silt of ages, gradually raised their beds, now run along high levels. During floods they pour over their banks upon the surrounding valleys, by a thousand channels which interlace and establish communication between the main streams. After numerous bifurcations they find their way into the sea by three principal mouths. Silt-banks and surf-washed bars render the entrance to these rivers perilous. The best harbour in Cuttack district is at False Point, on the north of the Mahanadi estuary. It consists of an anchorage, land-locked by islands or sand-banks, and with two fair channels navigable towards the land. The famine commissioners in 1867 reported it to be the best harbour on the coast of India from the Hugli to Bombay.
The intermediate tract is a region of rich cultivation, dotted with great banyan trees, thickets of bamboos, exquisite palm foliage and mango groves. The hilly frontier separates the delta of British Orissa from the semi-independent tributary states. It consists of a series of ranges, 10 to 15 m. in length, running nearly due east and west, with densely-wooded slopes and lovely valleys between. The timber, however, is small, and is of little value except as fuel. The political character of these three tracts is as distinct as are their natural features. The first and third are still occupied by feudal chiefs, and have never been subjected to a regular land-settlement, by either the Mussulman or the British government. They pay a light fixed tribute. The intermediate rice plains, known as the Mogholbandi, from their having been regularly settled by the Mahommedans, have yielded to the successive dynasties and conquerors of Orissa almost the whole of the revenues derived from the province. The deltaic portions are of course a dead level; and the highest hills within the district in the western or frontier tract do not exceed 2500 ft. They are steep, and covered with jungle, but can be climbed by men. The most interesting of them are the Assa range, with its sandal trees and Buddhist remains; Udayagiri (Sunrise-hill), with its colossal image of Buddha, sacred reservoir, and ruins; and Assagiri, with its mosque of 1719. The Mahavinayaka peak, visible from Cuttack, has been consecrated for ages to Siva-worship by ascetics and pilgrims.
The population of the district in 1901 was 2,062,758, showing an increase of 6% in the preceding decade. The aboriginal tribes here, as elsewhere, cling to their mountains and jungles. They chiefly consist of the Bhumij, Tala, Kol and Savara peoples, the Savaras being by far the most numerous, numbering 14,775. They are regarded by the orthodox Hindus as little better than the beasts of the wildernesses which they inhabit. Miserably poor, they subsist for the most part by selling firewood or other products of their jungle; but a few of them have patches of cultivated land, and many earn wages as day labourers to the Hindus. They occupy, in fact, an intermediate stage of degradation between the comparatively well-to-do tribes in the tributary states (the stronghold and home of the race), and the Pans, Bauris, Kandras and other semi-aboriginal peoples on the lowlands, who rank as the basest castes of the Hindu community. The great bulk of the Indo-Aryan or Hindu population consists of Uriyas, with a residue of immigrant Bengalis, Lala Kayets from Behar and northern India, Telingas from the Madras coast, Mahrattas from central and western India, a few Sikhs from the Punjab and Marwaris from Rajputana. The Mahommedans are chiefly the descendants of the Pathans who took refuge in Orissa after the subversion of their kingdom in Bengal by the Moguls in the 16th century.
Rice forms the staple product of the district; its three chief varieties are biali or early rice, sarad or winter rice, and dalua or spring rice. The other cereal crops consist of mandua (a grass-like plant producing a coarse grain resembling rice), wheat, barley, and china, a rice-like cereal. Suan, another rice-like cereal, not cultivated, grows spontaneously in the paddy fields. Pulses of different sorts, oilseeds, fibres, sugar-cane, tobacco, spices and vegetables also form crops of the district. The cultivators consist of two classes—the resident husbandmen (thani) and the non-resident or migratory husbandmen (pahe).
The Orissa canal system, which lies mainly within Cuttack district, is used both for irrigation and transport purposes. The railway across the district towards Calcutta, a branch of the Bengal-Nagpur system, was opened in 1899. Considerable trade is carried on at the mouth of the rivers along the coast.
CUTTLE-FISH. The more familiar and conspicuous types of the molluscan class Cephalopoda (q.v.) are popularly known in English as cuttle-fish, squid, octopus and nautilus. The first of these names (from the A.S. cudele) is applied more particularly to the common Sepia (fig. 1), characterized by its internal calcareous shell, sometimes known as cuttle-bone, and its ink-sac, the contents of which have been long in use as a pigment (sepia). The term squid is employed among fishermen for the ten-armed Cephalopods in which the shell is represented by an uncalcified flexible structure somewhat resembling a pen. Hence in Italian a squid is called calamaio, from calamus a reed or pen, and in English the similar term calamary is sometimes used. Like the Sepia, squids also possess the ink-sac, whence they have sometimes been called pen and ink fish, and in German both Sepia and squid and their allies are known as Tinten-fische. The squids have generally softer and more watery tissues than the Sepia, but the former term is not in general use, and the distinction not generally understood. The term cuttle-fishes is sometimes extended to include all the Cephalopoda, but as the peculiarities of the remarkable shell of the true nautilus, and those of the shell-less Octopoda are widely known, we shall consider the name here as applying only to those forms which have ten arms, an ink-sac, an internal shell-rudiment, and only one pair of gills in the mantle cavity. Technically these form the sub-order Decapoda, of the order Dibranchia.
The cuttle-fishes are characteristically swimming animals, in contrast with the octopods, which creep about by means of their suckers among the rocks, and lurk in holes. In Sepia the integument is produced laterally into two muscular fins, rather narrow and of uniform breadth running the whole length of the body, but separated by a notch behind. There are four pairs of short non-retractile arms surrounding the mouth, and furnished with suckers on their oral surface, and between the third and fourth of these arms on each side is a much longer tentacular arm, which is usually kept entirely withdrawn into a pocket of the skin. The mantle cavity is on the posterior side of the body, which is the lower side in the swimming position, and the funnel is a tube open at both ends and connected with the body within the mouth of the mantle cavity. The mantle during life performs regular respiratory movements by which water is drawn into the cavity, passing between mantle and funnel, and is expelled through the funnel. In swimming the short arms are directed forwards, the fins undulate, and the motion is slow and deliberate; but if the animal is threatened or alarmed it swims suddenly and rapidly backwards by expelling water
