The ancient nomad method of relying entirely on pasture both winter and summer is fast dying out. To-day the largest group of inhabitants depends on herding plus some cultivation, often the growing of lucerne. Many Kirghiz are in the semi-nomadic stage of relying on some particular valley for wintering their flocks. This means that hay must be grown and dried for winter use, and grain, especially wheat and barley, is often grown as well. The houses in these winter "auls" are built of mud, with flat roofs, on which are stored the haystacks for winter use ; the grain fields are roughly divided by mud and stone walls. In many places the crops are dependent on primitive irrigation channels. The milk, meat and "kumiss" or fermented mare's milk, diet, is increasingly supplemented by grain, tea and sugar. The tents and their furni ture are much the same as those in Kazakstan (q.v.). In the fertile loess belt extending from Frunze to the north-east of Lake Issyk-Kul, there are colonies of Russian settlers, and here and in the loess region round Dzhalyal-Abad and Osh, where the eastern end of the Ferghana valley penetrates into the republic, irrigation-cultivation of an intensive type is carried on; cotton in 1926-27 yielded 38,00o tons, and grain and fruits, vine, apricot, peach and melon were raised in quantity. Rice and opium poppy are grown near Dzhalyal-Abad, and the silkworm is bred, about 128,00o tons of cocoons per annum being produced. A little coal and rock salt are mined, but lack of transport facilities prevents the working of the coal, naphtha, ozokerite, iron, copper, lead, silver, zinc, gold and asbestos known to exist. Homespun woollen, cotton and silk goods are made; felt and rugs for the tents, orna mented leather goods and small metal utensils, but they are essen tially peasant industries to meet local needs.
Factory industry is almost non-existent, except for a few dis tilleries and oil pressing works, but since 1925 three or four cotton cleaning factories have been successfully established in the Dzhalyal-Abad-Osh district. Means of communication in this remote and difficult region are almost absent. A branch of the Orenburg-Tashkent railway passes through Frunze and has been recently extended to Tokmak, and a branch of the Kokand Andizhan railway reaches Dzhalyal-Abad, but these two regions are on the fringes of the republic. Steamers ply on Lake Issyk Kul. Education and medical help are available only in a few settlements; the vast majority of the Kirghiz are beyond their reach. Of the 9% of the population able to read and write, most are Russians. Population in 1933 was about 1,300,000, of whom 66.6% were Kara-Kirghiz, '14% Uzbeks, 11.7% Russians and
6.4% Ukrainians. The administrative centre is Frunze, mainly a Russian town; Naryn, in the centre of the high plateau, pop. (1926) 1,547 is the only settlement of town type where the Kir ghiz predominate. The Kara-Kirghiz are a branch of the same Turkish (Mongol-Tatar) race as the Kazak-Kirghiz and resemble them in physical type and language (see KAZAKSTAN). The name Kirghiz originally applied to them alone and they trace it from a legendary chief named Kirghiz. Kara (black) was prefixed be cause of the colour of their felt tents or "kibitkas." Russian writ ers refer to them as Cherniye (Black) or Dikokammeniye (Wild Stone or Rocky) Kirghiz, and a few English writers have called them Black Kirghiz.
The name Kirghiz first occurs in an account of an embassy sent to them by the East Roman emperor, Justin II. in 569. Chinese chroniclers (128o-1367) refer to them as Ki-li-ki-tz' and place their territory north-west of Pekin, about the head-streams of the Yenisei, while the earlier records of the T'ang dynasty (618-907) refer to them as Kha-kia-tz' (pronounced Khaka, and sometimes transliterated Haka). These records also afford evi dence of their Mongol-Tatar origin. They have been settled in these mountain fastnesses at least since the 13th century and probably earlier. At one time the upper Yenisei and Baikal regions were occupied by the Kara-Kirghiz and they were referred to by the Mongols as Burut, ut being the Mongolian plural ending modi fied to Buriat (see BURIAT MONGOL A.S.S.R.). However, in the I7th century the Russians and Kazak-Kirghiz exterminated those east of the Irtish, and drove the remainder west and south west. Most of them sought refuge with their nomad Kara-Kirghiz kinsmen in the highlands of the Tian Shan and Pamir region. The Kara-Kirghiz are grouped into the On (right or east) section occupying the Issyk-Kul, Chu, Tekes and Naryn valleys and the Sol (left or west) section, occupying the region between the Talass and Oxus headstreams. Nomad groups often visit the Pamir plateau in summer, and Kara-Kirghiz are to be found in Chinese Turkistan. Their region was annexed to Russia in and under the tsarist Government formed part of the Turkistan province. For a time after 1917 there was a Turkistan republic, which included the Kara-Kirghiz region. In 1924 it ceased to exist and the Kara-Kirghiz autonomous area, reorganized in 1926 as a republic, was created.