314 
Modern Business Geography 
tion, as well as their own poverty, makes the people unable to pay for 
goods from a distance. Among the majority of the Chinese and In- 
dians, eighty per cent of a family’s entire income is often represented 
by the rice, millet, beans, and other food products on which they live. 
5. Map exercise. On an outline map of Asia, insert in their proper places in 
each country the names of all products which are produced there abundantly 
and of which Asia produces at least 20 per cent of the world’s total. 
Use Table V. What parts of Asia have the greatest variety of products? 
6. Judging from Table V and your map, state the kinds of foods that you 
would expect to be most common in the following regions : 
(a) West central Siberia (¢) Southern Japan (f) Java 
(b) Manchuria (d) Northern India (9) Turkey 
(e) Central India 
Verify your answers from reference books. 
What indications do you see in Table V that most of the people of 
Asia live on a vegetable diet? What products are most widely eaten? 
What ones take the place of meat? 
rd 
In India, where the Asiatic cattle are most abundant, and to a less 
extent in neighboring countries, cattle are used largely as draft ani- 
mals and beasts of burden. 
2 
What effect does this have on people’s diet? How do the figures for 
dairy products in Table V bear out your conclusion? What is the 
effect of the use of cattle as draft animals upon the number of hides avail- 
able from a given number of animals? 
Effect of climatic and physical conditions on production in Asia and 
Australia. Climatically Asia and Australia are alike in having a vast 
central area too dry for extensive human occupation, and in having 
the chief agricultural areas along the east coast and in the peninsulas 
that project equatorward. There heavy summer rains of the monsoon 
type permit a dense population to find a living. Both continents also 
have a western region more than 30° from the equator, where winter 
rains permit a moderately dense population to support itself by agri- 
culture in spite of summer droughts. On the side away from the 
equator Asia projects into latitudes so high that agriculture is impossible 
in a large Siberian region, but Australia has nothing corresponding to 
this. Its southeastern corner, however, together with Tasmania and 
New Zealand, is like the best or western part of Siberia in being 
traversed by cyclonic storms, at least in winter, so that it has a fair 
amount of rain in winter as well as in summer.