central delta is the kapila or mótu worked by bullocks, but the picottah (called tokkudu yétham) is usual elsewhere.
A peculiarity of the district is its artesian wells. The existence of an artesian supply was accidentally discovered while digging an ordinary well in the railway-station compound at Samalkot in 1892-93, the water being encountered at a depth of about eighty feet. Since then several other artesian wells have been sunk; namely, a second in the station compound, two in 1904 in the sugar refinery at the same place (water being reached at some 110 feet), and a fifth in the railway-station yard at Cocanada Port, where the water was nearly 300 feet below ground level. Artesian water has also been found on the Pólavaram and Yernagúdem border during the recent explorations for coal in that neighbourhood but borings at Pithápuram have been unsuccessful.
In the zamindaris the ryots have usually no admitted occupancy right. They pay money rents fixed each year. In the Agency, the tenants of the muttadars are apparently protected from 'rack-renting and eviction by the scarcity of cultivators and the consequent desire of each landholder to keep those he has.
In Government land, fields are frequently sub-let by the pattadars, the consideration being either a share of the actual crop (samgóru) or, much more commonly, a fixed payment in money or grain called sist.
The sharing system seems to be chiefly restricted to inferior wet land, and under it the crop is everywhere divided equally between the landholder and the tenant. The latter usually finds the seed, the cattle and the labour, but in Bhadráchalam a landholder will often let his permanent farm-servants cultivate a piece of his land with his cattle and seed on condition of receiving half the crop resulting.
Fixed rents are only paid in grain in the case of wet land. Grain rents are usually rather lower than money rents, as there is less chance of evading payment of them. The tenant, as before, finds seed, cattle and labour; but in Pithápuram a variant called the backyard (peradu) system prevails under which the landholder lends the cattle. Agricultural labourers are either farm-servants engaged by the year (pálikápu) or coolies hired by the day or job. The former usually engage themselves for the whole year to some landholder, who then has the exclusive right to their services. Accounts are settled, and fresh engagements made, on the eleventh day of the bright fortnight of the month Ashádha (July-August), which is well known throughout the district under the name of 'the initial ékádasi' (toll ékádasi). Then, as the proverb significantly
