The women are occupied in spinning and weaving wool and in making felt, often of gay colours, and rugs of every shade and pattern. Clothing is of sheepskin and felt, supplemented by cotton head-dresses for the women. Milk, cheese and butter are kept in partially dressed sheepskins, and a certain amount of leather dressing is carried on. Their round tents are made of a folding willow-lattice frame, covered with felt, and rugs, wooden bowls and sheepskin bags are their main furniture. For fuel they rely mainly on the saksaul scrub, and on dried dung. The Kirghiz flocks are an important source of raw wool and leather to the factories of industrial Russia and 2,443,00o dekatons of wool were supplied in 1926-7 and about 6,000,000 hides. A difficult problem is the recurrence of cattle murrain in a district where veterinary centres are few and restrictions on cattle movement impossible.
Dysentery, smallpox, typhus, Siberian plague and malaria often work havoc among the nomads, for whom no medical aid is avail able; in illness they rely on Shamanistic practices. Their healthy out-of-door life is balanced against the great hardships of their extreme climate, their monotonous and often insufficient diet and their lack of sanitary practices. Thus they succumb easily to disease in spite of their robust appearance. About 95% of them are illiterate and this adds to the difficulty of inculcating hygiene for themselves and their flocks.
The first authentic reference to the Kazaks is that of the Per sian, Firdousi (1020). S. Herbertstein (1486-1566) refers to them as Tatars. They came under the sway of Jenghiz Khan, and after wards were allotted to the Golden Horde. Fragments of the Golden Horde, e.g., Kipchaks, Naimans, Konrats, Jalairs, Kankali are still to be traced in the names of tribal Kazak divisions. The Kirghiz-Kazaks have long been grouped into three large "hordes," the great, the little and the middle, said to be due to their divi sion by a Khan among his three sons. The great horde chiefly occupies the east from Semipalatinsk, to the Ala-tau ; the middle horde occupies the water-shed between the Aral-Caspian and the Ob river, being most numerous in the Semipalatinsk and Akmolinsk districts, while the little horde is mainly found in the Orenburg, Uralsk, Turgai and Astrakhan regions. The two latter accepted Russian rule in 1730 and the former in 1798-1819. Since i8o1, a fourth horde, the inner or Bukeyevakaya, has been settled in the Orenburg steppe. These hordes are subdivided into races, and again into tribes, and the tribes into sections, branches and "awls," or communities of 5 to 15 tents or "kibitkas." Through all their troubled history they have retained these divisions, which were still closely adhered to in 1928.
Cultivation in the Kazakh S.S.R. is densest along the northern valley of the Ural river, especially from Uralsk to Ilek, along the Tobol river in the Kustanai district, along the right bank of the Ishim, in the Kokchetav-Atbazar-Akmolinsk district, and in a little patch near the town of Semipalatinsk. Less dense patches of cultivation fringe the eastern and southern mountains along the loess terraces and extend along the Syr-Darya as far as Kyzil Orda. Of the crops, wheat 63%, is the main, millet, oats, rye, sunflower seed, flax, hemp and cotton are also grown. Rice is increasing in quantity. Much of the grain is exported to Central Asia. Tobacco and the opium poppy are cultivated, and near Lake Balkhash the kendyr plant, whose fibres are valuable, grows wild. Irrigation culture is peculiarly dependent upon good govern ment, and the disorders of 1914-1921 severely affected the region; by 1927 the irrigated area was still only 82% of that of 1915. Fishing and hunting form a supplementary source of income, the latter in the mountain region, and about f960,000 worth of furs were exported in 1925-6. The republic is rich in mineral wealth, as yet little exploited. The copper mines were re-started in 1925 and the output in 1926-7 was 700,000 tons. The mines working are Spasski, Atlas, Riddersk and Atbazar. Lead and zinc are also worked at the latter, and the lead mines of Ekibastus give gold as a by-product. Gold is also obtained from the Turgai steppe, and gold, lead and zinc occur in the Altai. The extensive Kara gandinsk coal beds near Spasski, are comparatively little worked. Naphtha is increasingly worked on the Emba river; the output 1926-7 was 250,000 tons. Silver is mined in a primitive way. The coal, naphtha, ozokerite and bitumen of the Mangishlak peninsula are as yet unworked. Salt is obtained from the Iletsk rock salt beds, and from the lakes of the Pavlodar district and Glauber's salt from Kara Bugaz gulf ; salt fish is exported from the Caspian and Aral regions. The industries of the republic in clude leather, flour, food-stuffs and printing. There is a large cloth factory in Alma-Ata and a chemical works and santonin factory in Chimkent. Kustar (home) industries include the mak ing of woollen goods, felt, carpets, sheepskin garments and leather goods. The timber area of the foothills and mountains on the east and south is great and with better transport could be made avail able for areas where irrigation is necessary and wood needed. It could also supplement the deficient fuel supply.