Cambridge Biological Series AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS 1 N LiBRAKY-AQRlCULTURE AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, MANAGER LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY ] CALCUTTA I MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. MADRAS I TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE BY J. C. WILLIS, M.A., Sc.D., F.R.S. European Correspondent, late Director of the Botanic Gardens, Rio de Janeiro ; formerly Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Ceylon, Organising Vice- President, Ceylon Agricultural Society, and Editor of The Tropical Agriculturist THIRD EDITION, REVISED Cambridge : at the University Press 1922 . W5S .First Edition 1909 Second Edition, Revised 1914 Tfcird -Edison 1922 L-1BRARY-AGF?!CULTURE PEEFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION DURING the last twenty-five years a great deal of attention has been drawn to agriculture in the tropics, as to other subjects connected with the same regions of the world. Not only do people travel more in the tropical regions, not only has there been great rivalry between the nations of the North in acquiring and developing colonies there, but also such agricultural phenomena as the collapse of coffee planting and the rise of cinchona, cacao, and_tfia_in- Ceylon, the d* Nutmegs 2,338 Coca 662 Coconut oil (1000 litres) 33,237 INDO-CHINA, 1917. Rice 1,366,748 Maize 12,425 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, 1917 — 18. Abaca or Manila hemp $54,493,970 Sugar 13,304,770 Copra 9,527,241 Cigars 5,708,718 Other tobacco and cigarettes 5,059,655 GOLD COAST, 1919. Cocoa 176,000 tons Palm Kernels ... ... ... ... ... 9,986 Kola nuts 7,143 FEDERATED MALAY STATES, 1919. Rubber ... 106,453 tons Copra 26,650 FIJI, 1920. Sugar 73,000 tons XIV INTRODUCTION BAHAMAS, 1919—20. Sisal hemp 6,341,000 Ibs. BARBADOS, 1918. Sugar 57,000 tons Cotton 188,000 Ibs. CUBA, 1920. Sugar (estimated) 3,650,000 tons JAMAICA, 1919. Cocoa £286,000 Coconuts 285,000 Coffee 356,000 Fruit (chiefly bananas) 1,141,000 Pimento 184,000 Rum 924,000 Sugar 1,317,000 TRINIDAD, 1918. Sugar 35,104 tons Rum 145,035 galls. Cocoa 26,178 tons BRITISH GUIANA, 1919. Sugar 93,902 tons BRAZIL, 1920. Coffee (bags of 60 kilos each) 11,524,000 Sugar 109,140 tons Mate" 90,686 Chilled meat 60,897 Cocoa ... .„ 54,418 Hides 37,265 Tobacco 31,469 Cotton 24,696 Rubber 23,586 INTRODUCTION XV When we look over this and similar lists, and realise that the tropics supply us with all our cinchona bark (for quinine), cinnamon, coconuts, coconut oil, copra, coir, coffee, gutta-percha, jute, palm-oil, rice (with the exception of a little in the Southern United States), rubber, sago, spices, sugar (except the beet sugar of the continent), tea, tapioca, and many other things, the vast importance of agriculture in the tropics, and of its proper conservation, improvement and extension, will be understood. The area occupied by the cultivation of the export products is perhaps 50 million acres and that spent in maintaining the actual people of the tropics is perhaps about another 275 millions. Even at this rate not more than half the available land is used, and not only so, but much of it is very inefficiently used, while intensive agriculture, as practised in Europe or America, is almost unknown, except among European planters. Could the yield of cereals in India, for example, be increased by a mere bushel an acre, a vast difference would for a time be made in the economic prosperity of that country. This, however, is more easily said than done. The agriculture conducted by Europeans in the tropics is more efficient than that of the natives of the country. This may be roughly illustrated by the case of Ceylon, where the exports of " European " produce are to those of " native " produce as 3 to 1, while the area cultivated by the former, and the population supported by it, are only as 1 to 5, the popula- tion being equally dense in either case, or denser on the European estates. Before agriculture upon any but the very smallest scale or basis can be carried on in a country, there must be in that country satisfactory conditions as regards certain indispensable preliminaries. Land must be available at a moderate cost. The price of land will naturally vary with its advantages as regards nearness to market, good or bad transport facilities, good or bad climate, and many other things, but " moderate " in the sense used here will of course take note of all these things. Roads or other means of transport must be in good order, to bring material to the plantation and to take the produce XVI INTRODUCTION away. Without good means of transport, it is idle to expect any serious agricultural industries to be carried on, for sale or export of the produce. Capital, to some extent at least, must be forthcoming. Even those undertakings which soonest give a return, such as cotton, whose crop can be picked in six months, need a certain amount of capital to tide over the period of waiting ; without this only the very smallest enterprises can be carried on, and even these will often be in an unhealthy condition, their crops being mortgaged to money-lenders. Labour must also be available, if any but very small enterprises are to go on. A man and his family cannot obviously till more than a few acres at most, and for anything more extensive — and efficiency in agriculture largely goes with the larger enterprises — we must have hired labour. This difficulty is one of the greatest that confront anyone proposing to start agricultural enterprises in the tropics. In India, Ceylon, the Malay States, Java, and some of the West Indian islands, labour is comparatively plentiful, but elsewhere it is usually difficult to obtain. In the first part of this book, we propose to discuss, in brief, these necessary preliminaries to agriculture. In the second we shall consider the principal cultivated crops of the tropics in a general way, with a view partly to making sugges- tions for their improvement. In the third part we shall go on to consider village and capitalist agriculture respectively, with the directions in which improvement seems most possible, and in the concluding part of the work shall discuss agricultural policy, and the organisation of a department of agriculture, a thing which has now become a necessity in most tropical countries. PAET I THE PRELIMINARIES TO AGRICULTURE CHAPTER I LAND AND SOIL LAND in the tropics may be of many types, but the two chief kinds are forest and grass lands, and it is as a rule only on the former (or what has been so) that there is much agri- culture. Speaking broadly, the greater part of the land near to the sea is, or has been (as apparently in India), covered with forest, which in general marks the districts of good and well- distributed rainfall. In the interior of tropical Africa, and in parts of South America, what the Americans term savannahs, i.e. open park-like grass lands, with patches of forest here and there, prevail. Forest land is preferred for agriculture, not only on account of its (usually) better rainfall, but also on account of its richer soil, due to the humus, or decaying organic matter, contained in it. The forest is felled, and burnt off in the drier weather of the year. As a rule the timber does not pay to work, and is completely burnt, enough only being kept for houses, factories, etc. The crops are put out among the stumps, which in a few years are completely removed by decay and white ants. A very favourite method of cultivation, among natives in the east at any rate, is what is called in Ceylon chena, in Malaya ladang, in India jhuming, etc. The forest, or rather the trees in it below a certain girth, is felled and burnt, and w. 1 . , . . . . . - 2 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I various cereals or other crops are sown upon the land in the rains. On a rich, newly cleared land, these give a very large return for a minimum of work, and this method of cultivation is in consequence highly popular, until the country becomes too thickly peopled to admit of it. After one to three crops the land is abandoned, and grows up in scrubby jungle, and may be again chena-ed after 8 — 50 years. Vast areas of good forest land have been ruined in southern Asia by this destructive practice, and in most countries chena permits for crown land are only issued now under stress of very hard times and failure of the regular crops. Land in the tropics may be held in a variety of ways. For instance, in Ceylon the tenure is fully freehold, and the owner of land leaves it to his children, the men taking it in equal shares, as in France. By this means, emigration even to new districts in the same country is rendered difficult, and there is little chance of anyone showing any agricultural enterprise, unless he be a comparatively large holder of land. The ordinary villager owns a mere trifle of land, as a rule barely sufficient for his own support and that of his family. In this way, the land becomes very "ancestral," and the same family may go on in the same place for an almost unlimited number of generations. When the area is small, the ownership is com- monly joint and this still further retards agricultural progress, for all the owners must consent before any change can be introduced. While in Ceylon the holder of land pays no tax to the Government, in India he pays a considerable levy upon his land, but most often, perhaps, holds it otherwise freehold. In India, Ceylon, and other eastern countries the ancient system of "villages" prevails, these being divisions of country of 500 acres or more, sometimes, but not always, with a central village street or group of houses. Very often some of the land is cultivated, some waste, and most commonly, perhaps, the latter is the joint property of the village, all the villagers being allowed to graze their cattle on it, or to cut wood there. The villages themselves may be "joint" villages, owned in their entirety by the community living in them, who work the land CH. I] LAND AND SOIL 3 in sections appropriated to each family, sometimes on a more or less cooperative system ; but more often, within the tropics, they are not such villages, but each family actually owns (or leases) a piece of land. In the former case the village is assessed as a whole for the payment of the Government tax; in the latter each proprietor is separately assessed. In both cases the village artisans are often paid by a levy on the produce. In the Federated Malay States, land is regarded as entirely the property of the Government ; in fact, " land nationalisation," so much discussed in Europe, is already an accomplished fact in this country. Anyone may buy land from the Government on payment of a premium of one dollar or so an acre, and an annual quit-rent of one or more dollars an acre. Should he cease to pay the rent, or abandon the land for three consecutive years, the Government steps in and resumes possession of it. The original grant of the land from the Government is for 999 years, so that there is no fear of the possessor being disturbed, so long as he continues to work the land properly, but the Government is entitled tto revise the rate of quit-rent payable every 30 years. In many ways this is perhaps the best system of alienating land from the Government, for the latter derive an annual income from it, and resume it if abandoned, while the original buyer does not need to expend so much capital on the actual purchase as he does for instance in Ceylon, where he buys the land outright; and thus he has more available for cultivation. In the West Indies, and in most of the modern British tropical colonies, the land is freehold, and though at one time in the former it was very largely held in big blocks for sugar and other plantations, it is now passing to some extent into the hands of small peasant proprietors. Except in the thinly peopled countries it is gradually becoming more and more difficult to obtain considerable blocks of land for the larger agricultural enterprises, for the small proprietor usually sticks very closely to his own little patch of land, and refuses to sell it, even if it be almost surrounded by a large estate. 1—2 4 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I Soils. Speaking generally, the soils of the tropics are very poor as compared with those of the temperate zone. Instead of the comparatively dark colour and damp look of the latter, which is partly due to the larger content of humus, or decaying organic matter, they show a light colour and rather dry appearance in ordinary fine weather, being very poor in humus. Decay takes place so rapidly and so completely that there is but little accumulation of its products. The soils that occur are of every conceivable kind, depending mainly upon the subjacent rocks. The richest are in general the volcanic soils such as are found in Java, the West Indies, and elsewhere, but there are also very good deposited or alluvial soils in Ceylon, India, the Malay States, and in other countries. And it is worthy of notice, as tending to show that superior richness, provided that the two soils have both all the elements of plant food in fair amount, often makes but little difference, that the growth of most cultivated crops in Java, such as tea, cacao, rubber, etc., is but little superior to that in the poor soils of Ceylon, and sometimes is not so good1. Probably as the result of the lack of humus, the tropical soils seem on the whole to be rather less water-retaining than those of more northern countries, and the plants growing in them (in the open) tend to flag rather more quickly for lack of water, though it is true that the sun is so much hotter that this may probably be sufficient to account for the fact. 1 This, formerly an unexplained fact, becomes clearer in the light of recent physiological work. Of. Blackman, Optima and Limiting Factors, Annals of Botany, xix, 1905, p. 281 ; Smith, Application of the theory of Limiting Factors to Measurements of Growth, Annals R. B. G. Peradeniya, in, 1906, p. 303. CHAPTER II CLIMATE THE tropics cover so vast an area that it is obvious that there must be a great variety in climates, but in general the types of climate may be set down as two : the moist, near the equator and the sea; and the dry, inland, and usually away from the equator. The former is characterised by a moist air, and a comparatively uniform temperature, with but little daily or annual variation, the latter by a considerable range, often, if it be far from the equator, annual as well as daily, and a dry air ; while of course as one ascends the mountains one as a rule comes into a cooler and moister climate. Every type of climate may be met with in passing from the south of Ceylon to the north of India, so that a comparison of some of the figures for various places lying between these extremes will be useful, while others are also given. The nearer to the equator, other things being equal, the smaller is the annual range of temperature : Colombo Madura Cochin Bombay Surat Calcutta Batavia Mean max. 89 101 91 90 100 96 86 „ min. 72 68 71 68 56 55 72 „ humidity 78 65 80 77 62 78 83 Manila Chinchoxo Lado Colon Kio de Janeiro Sao Paulo x Mean max. 96 86 88 92 86 94 „ min. 64 67 75 75 62 41 „ humidity 79 85 77 83 78 85 1 Elevation 2485 feet. 6 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I It will be noticed that the range is greater the lower the humidity, in addition to increasing as one passes to the north ; compare for instance Madura and Cochin, which are in approxi- mately the same latitude. The prevailing character of the climate near the equator and near the sea, as at Colombo, is a very uniform temperature, with rain at all times of the year, but more especially when the sun has just passed overhead. Near the equator, therefore, there are two more specially rainy seasons in the year, at intervals of about six months, while as one goes northward they get nearer and nearer together, till in the far north or south of the tropics they run into one rainy season of a few months duration, as the following tables of rainfall will illustrate. Colombo Trichinopoli Bangalore Bombay Nagpur Calcutta I'O 0-2 O'l 0-6 0-4 0-5 0-1 O'O 0-4 1-0 07 0-6 0-0 0-6 1-3 1-8^ l'3\ 0-0 0'5 2'3 3-81 5-0 L 0-5 0-8 5-6 1-3J 3'2j 20-8} 8-8^ 11-8' 2'2 4-0 24-7 [ 13-3 1 ISO' 4'4 5'9-j 15-1 j 8-9 j 13'9 5-3^ 6'3 1 10-8 J 7'8 J 10O 7-8 L 6-4 J 1-8 2-3 5'4 5-2J 1-9 0-5 0-4 0-6 3-1 07 0-1 0'5 0-3 1 Rainy seasons indicated by brackets. The longer the dry season, the hotter, generally speaking, it becomes, so that in the north of India the heat is often extreme at the end of the dry weather, whereas, near the equator, where there is rain at all times, the highest temperatures recorded are rarely above 90°. The range of temperature is greater in the northern hemisphere than in the southern, where the land masses are smaller, and only in the interior of Australia does the temperature become anything like so high as in norfch India, 1 Blanford, Climate and Weather of India and Ceylon. CH. II] CLIMATE 7 Near the equator, and near the sea, the climate is wonderfully uniform, the mean temperatures of the twelve months at Colombo being for example 79, 80, 82, 83, 83, 82, 81, 81, 81, 81, 80, 80, while at Singapore they are almost the same. On the average, in Colombo, the temperature only reaches about 86° during the day, and falls to about 75° at night. In drier places inland the daily range is greater, but the annual range is much the same until one gets far from the equator. Humidity, other things being equal, increases with elevation. Thus Colombo at sea level, and Hakgala at 5600 feet, have much the same rainfall, similarly distributed, and their average humidities are 78 and 87 respectively. Another feature which makes some difference to the climate of a place is the exposure upon the mountains. Thus in Ceylon, when the south-west monsoon is blowing, there is heavy rain upon the western side of the mountain chain, while the eastern side is comparatively dry. While the rainfall at Ratnapura, on the south-western side, is 20*78 inches in June, that at Badulla, 50 miles away, upon the eastern side, is only 2 '66 inches. In the north-east monsoon, which blows for six months in the year in the opposite direction, the positions are reversed, so that the main wet seasons in the two places differ by about six months, and the periodicity of the phenomena of plant life is also different, Para rubber for instance ripening its seeds at Badulla in February, and at Ratnapura in August. The actual direction of exposure of a place upon the mountains also makes a difference. In Java and Ceylon, the mornings are comparatively cloudless compared with, the after- noons. It therefore follows that, in general, a place with an eastern exposure will get more sunshine than one with an exactly similar exposure to the west. In the extreme north of the tropics, a place with a northern exposure will, other things being equal, be colder than one with a southern exposure, and in the extreme south the reverse will be the case. The amount of sunshine falling upon a particular place is also a feature of some importance. The temperature in the sun is usually very high, amounting to 140° — 170° F., while that in 8 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I the shade will in general be 60° — 80° lower. While in places like Singapore, where the influence of the monsoons is slight, there may be sunshine nearly every day, in places like Ceylon, where they are very pronounced, there may be weeks or even months with hardly a gleam of sunshine during the first onset of the monsoons. Rain in the .tropics usually falls in violent showers, rapidly raising the levels of the streams, making roads and flowerbeds " swim " with water, and doing a good deal of damage by the silting up of stream beds, washing away of soil, etc. The usual shower varies from 0'03 to 3'0 inches, and it falls in a much shorter time than in Europe. Wind in the tropics is, generally speaking, light compared with that found, for instance, in Great Britain. In the monsoon region of South Asia, near the equator the wind blows fairly steadily for six months in one, and six in the other direction, the year being less evenly divided further north. In tropical, as in other countries, elevation has a very definite influence upon the climate, the mean temperature — and that for practically all hours of the day and night — falling about 3'5°— 4° F. for every 1000 feet of ascent. Thus in Ceylon, to take places with about similar and similarly distributed rain- fall, the mean temperature of various months in Colombo, at sea level, runs from 79° to 83°, at Peradeniya, 1560 feet above sea level, from 74° to 79°, and at Hakgala, 5600 feet above sea level, from 58° to 63°. To dwellers in Europe, where the thermo- meter may easily range from the highest to the lowest of these figures in one day, these may seem trifling differences, but they have a most marked effect upon vegetable life where they go on, as these do, all the year round. Hardly a plant grown in the botanic gardens at Hakgala is the same as in the gardens at Peradeniya, and this is not from any wish to keep the collec- tions dissimilar, but because plants which will grow at the latter place will often not grow at the former except under glass. With the exception of camphor and tea, which come from much further north, and are most accommodating to temperature, but few cultivations can be successfully carried on in both places. CH. II] CLIMATE 9 The range of temperature varies according to the slope, to some extent, and on open plains at high elevations there is often a very considerable range of temperature, making the climate very unlike that of places lying upon the slopes quite near by. Thus at Nuwara Eliya in Ceylon, which lies upon an open plain at an elevation of 6200 feet, the thermometer ranges between 28° arid 81° during the drier season of the year, while at Hakgala, only six miles off, and 600 feet lower, the extremes are about 37° and 79° during the same period, Hakgala lying upon the ordinary mountain slopes. Consequently, perhaps, many Euro- pean plants of the north succeed at Nuwara Eliya, while they merely struggle for life at Hakgala. The greater range of temperature on the plain is probably largely due to l^ie greater radiation that goes on ; and it will be noticed that there is more difference between the minima than between the maxima. The character of the soil also has to some extent an effect upon the climate, a sandy soil being liable to get much more heated during the day and cooled at night than a clayey one, so that there is a greater range of temperature upon the former. Drainage of the soil, more particularly in swampy land, thus has a tendency to make the range of temperature greater. The effect upon the climate of the clearing of the forests in a country has been a fruitful source of dispute, many of the disputants ignoring the fact that it need not necessarily be the same in all countries. So far as the tropics are concerned, its general effect seems to be to make the climate warmer and drier. In Ceylon, for example, at Peradeniya and Kandy, 1600 feet above sea level, most of the houses built prior to 1850 had fire- places, which are now quite unnecessary, all the forest having been cleared from the neighbourhood, and the mean temperature having apparently risen. In the Federated Malay States, the climate at corresponding elevations appears to be slightly cooler or at least more uniform and damper than in Ceylon, the whole country being much covered with forest. The clearing of the forest acts in a disastrous way upon the streams, these being now much exposed, and consequently liable to dry up during dry weather. Most of the streams which rise in the lower parts of the western mountains of Ceylon now dry 10 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I up during February and March, but those which rise above 5000 feet — land above that elevation being kept in its natural condition of forest — remain running during that period. Not only does clearing expose the soil to the sun, but also to the wind, which does not blow in the forest, and which has a drying effect. Shelter belts of trees have had to be planted through the tea and other crops throughout many planting districts, to check the sweeping of the wind over the fields. [The climate of southern tropical Brazil is so different from that of corresponding latitudes in the north, e.g. Calcutta, that its agriculture partakes to some extent of the character of that of the temperate zone. At Rio de Janeiro, for example (22° 50' S.), the mean temperatures of the various months range from 66° to 78°. The mean maximum is about 86°, minimum 62° (cf. Calcutta). There is well-distributed rain throughout the year, so that the place on the whole perhaps looks, though it does not feel, just as " tropical " as even Singapore or Java. The temperature in the sun is comparatively low, reaching about 133° at the maximum. The country inland is a plateau, with an elevation of 2000—2500 feet. Here the climate is 6 — 10° cooler ; the rain is chiefly in the summer, and many temperate-zone cultivations, even such as apples or strawberries, can be successfully carried on, whilst cattle-raising is a very large industry.] CHAPTER III POPULATION AND LABOUR THE total population of the tropics is large, yet not so great as that of the temperate zones, which have about the same area. India, Ceylon, Java, and some of the small West Indian islands are thickly populated, but in the rest of the tropics the peopling is extremely sparse. Of late years the natives of India and Java have begun to emigrate to other countries, and this may be expected to go on more and more; but as yet they in general ultimately return with their savings to their native land. The following rough figures of populations and densities are instructive, especially when we remember that South America, at any rate, is probably as productive as India : Country Area in sq. m. Population Density per sq. m. India 1,093,074 243,750,000 223 / Ceylon (W., S., and Centr. Pro vs.) 5,865 2,074,000 355; Java 50,557 34,157,383 675 Mexico 768,883 15,063,207 19 Brazil 3,298,870 24,309,000 7 Jamaica 4,450 832,000 187 Barbados 166 200,000 1204 Now nature is fairly prodigal in the tropics, and owing to the smaller wants of the people a larger population per square mile can probably be supported by agriculture than in the temperate zone, though the agriculture in general is inefficient. While in the United States two men are enough for 50 acres of rice, in the tropics 25 to 50 will be needed in many districts. The races that inhabit the tropics are very numerous and varied. The majority are natives of British India — Bengalis. 12 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I Mahrattas, Tamils, Telugus, Burmese, and many others of less note. In the south-eastern parts of Asia the Malayan races are of importance, more especially the natives of Java. Africa is mainly inhabited by negro races, and the same is the case in the West Indies, while Mexico and South America are chiefly the home of the mixed race, derived from the Spaniard or Portuguese, negro, and Indian. Speaking in a broad general way, all these races have similar faults regarded from the agricultural point of view. In particular, they may all be justly accused of what we may perhaps term in a general way indolence. However hard they may have to work upon their own properties to make a liveli- hood, the general principles upon which they act would seem to be — to do no work that can possibly be avoided, never to do to-day what can possibly be put off until to-morrow, and to do as their great grandfather did and because he did it. It can be readily seen, therefore, that to induce them to progress in agriculture, or in anything else, is a work of extraordinary difficulty. Such people show no desire for progress, and have no enterprise in taking up new industries or undertakings. In fact, it would appear that, as with other people, the chief stimulus to progress is increasing pressure of population^ So long as the natural capital of forests exists, and the inhabitants are but few, so long do the people subsist as much as possible upon chena, a very large area being required for each individual. As the population increases under settled government, chena is perforce given up on the introduction of more regular methods of cultivation, which in turn are improved as the number of people increases. (The two things of course go together and react upon one another, every improvement in agriculture being followed by an increase in population up to the limit of subsistence, unless checked by other factors) This limit has not yet been reached in much of tropical America and else- where. Not only is the tropical native characterised by indolence, but also by want of foresight. The man who looks forward more than a few months is a very provident individual indeed. A not untypical case was lately furnished in a certain district of CH. Ill] POPULATION AND LABOUR 13 the north of Ceylon. Getting a very large crop of rice in 1903, the villagers sat down to eat it, and grew not a blade until 1905, when their seed rice was almost all that they had left; this was sown, and was attacked by a bad outbreak of the " arakkodiyan" caterpillar, with the result of famine in these villages, whose inhabitants had practically done not a stroke of work for two years. Famine having come, of course the Government was called upon to help them out of their difficulties. Ignorance, often of the most pronounced kind, is another prominent quality among the poorer tropical natives, as among the poorer folk in other countries. Poverty, in the sense of lack of any money with which to buy things, is also a very strongly marked feature in ordinary village society, though poverty in the sense of actual dearth of things to eat and to wear is fortunately much less common, and in the more equatorial countries like Ceylon and Java is almost non-existent. Other obstacles to any agricultural progress are the remark- able conservatism of' the people, and their slavish adherence to ancient custom, their fondness for home, and consequent un- willingness to move into new districts where they might have a better chance in agricultural matters, and their prejudice against anything that smacks of novelty. All these matters will be considered again below. On the other hand, it must not be assumed that all the agricultural characters of the tropical races are necessarily bad, though they may be far inferior to the white races or to the Chinese. The manner in which they are willing to continue the cultivation of rice and many other products, though " there is no money in them," is on the whole distinctly commendable — within reasonable limits — and the leanings towards coopera- tion that many eastern races at any rate exhibit are in the highest degree praiseworthy, and to be fostered to the utmost. Cooperation in agriculture is becoming one of the most import- ant factors in its progress in Europe and America. In Ceylon, to take an example, the villagers often cooperate in the care of their rice fields, sowing each man's field in turn, or reaping it in turn, instead of each man having to do all his own work. 14 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I By a judicious handling of this principle of cooperation, there is little doubt that the agricultural prosperity of many eastern villages might be increased, while at the same time those villages could produce products for export — a thing they at present do not. Were they for example to devote a certain portion of the "common land" — a thing that exists in very many eastern villages — to the growing of "export" crops, a considerable industry might gradually come into being. But it is highly improbable that this could be effected at present without compulsion. In sharp contrast to the tropical races are the settlers among them from the north — the Europeans, the Americans, the Chinese. Of these, the last named seem to be the only race capable of settling and breeding in the tropics without any serious loss of stamina, for the "country bred" Europeans or Americans of the West or East Indies have to an appreciable extent the characters of the native races among whom they were brought up. In such densely peopled countries as India and Java the people have necessarily to work comparatively hard to acquire a living at all, and when the density, as in parts of Madras, is so great that the people live upon the borders of famine, they are more or less willing to emigrate to other countries where they can get greater wages, though they are rarely prepared even then to settle down in such countries. The hundreds of thousands of Tamil coolies who go from South India to Ceylon to work upon the tea estates and at other occupations practi- cally all go back again at one time or another. Their great object is to save enough money in their temporaiy home to be able to return to India after a few years, there buy land and settle down in their old home. Even the bulk of the Indian coolies who go so far afield as Africa and the West Indies ultimately return to their old country. Only in Mauritius and in Guiana is there any important native population of British Indians, and even in those countries a few hundred thousand is the total after many years. Coolies — to use the common Indian word for men upon daily pay — who go from the densely peopled countries, having CH. Ill] POPULATION AND LABOUR 15 learnt at home to work comparatively hard, are as a rule ready to do a fair amount of hard work, whereas the actual inhabitants of thinly or insufficiently peopled countries are as a rule very "lazy," nature being so bountiful to them that they do not need to work hard to make a living. It is but comparatively rarely that one finds an individual that has ambition to "better himself," and willingness to work hard for that end. It therefore follows that in thinly inhabited countries it is necessary to import labour if any serious work is to be done, especially by white men, or if any agricultural progress is to be made. Thus Ceylon1 and the Federated Malay States import labour, the former from India, the latter from India, China and Java; the more thinly populated West Indian islands import labour from the more thickly populated islands and from India ; Hawaii from Japan; southern Brazil from Italy; whereas India and Java do all their own work with their own in- habitants. Southern tropical Brazil, as explained under Climate, has really a climate more comparable to that of the temperate zone. White men can live with less strain on the health than in tropical Asia, and even breed there. The great industry of coffee, the largest exporting industry of the tropics, is mainly in the hands of white or nearly white Brazilians. The labour is also chiefly white, especially Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. 1 Ceylon (or at least S.W. Ceylon) is not thinly populated, but the Sinhalese are averse to hard or regular work, which has therefore to be done by the Tamils imported from South India, especially in the colder " up country " districts where tea is chiefly cultivated, and in which the Sinhalese do not willingly live. CHAPTER IV TRANSPORT AND CAPITAL Transport. Without some means of transporting goods to a more or less distant market, agriculture cannot be conducted upon the large scale, and tJmpnH-.iwqt.nr mvistr consume Ms own products^) If transport is difficult and costly, he is necessarily limited in his markets, whereas good and cheap transport multiplies the value of his produce by extending his market. Until this is provided, it is quite idle to expect any extensive agriculture to be carried on, unless — as occasionally but very rarely happens — the produce is so valuable that there is still a profit left after meeting the expenses of costly carriage) This was the case, for example, with india-rubber or with gutta-percha some ten years ago, and is the case with some few minor products at the present time. Such collection cannot, however, be termed agriculture. The most primitive mode of transport at present existing, and one very common in Africa at least, is the carriage of goods upon the heads of coolies along narrow paths winding through the jungle or over the plain from one village to another and to the nearest town. As one man can only carry a moderate load, and for a moderate distance in one day, it is obvious that this method, apart from other disadvantages, must be very costly and consequently that it can only open up distant markets to a very limited extent, the profits in most forms of agriculture being insufficient to stand heavy expenditure upon carriage. A step in advance of this is to have carriage along the paths by means of pack animals, usually bulls or ponies. By this means larger loads can be carried, and at a cheaper rate, and CH. IV] TRANSPORT AND CAPITAL 17 this method is as yet not uncommon in many parts of the tropics, especially where the cost of making proper roads is very great. The first real step towards modern transport facilities is, however, the provision of roads along which wheeled vehicles can be driven. By this means transport is rendered much cheaper and less precarious, and most of the more advanced countries in the tropics have now reached this stage to a greater or less extent. Some, such as Ceylon, the West Indies, India, have now got a very widespread and perfect system of roads, forming quite a network over the country. But with the interest in tropical agriculture that is now being felt in many quarters, and the extension of agricultural departments, and other organisations for the encouragement of agriculture, it will probably gradually be found that the present systems of roads, perfect though they may be, are altogether insufficient for the purpose, flf the villager is to grow " com- mercial" crops, he too, even more than the more wealthy proprietor, must be provided with cheap transport to the markets, instead of the present system of footpaths and coolie carriage} In a report upon the agriculture of the Federated Malay States we have pointed this out, and suggested that the whole country should be marked out by road reservations at distances of about a mile apart in each direction, somewhat as has already been done in the Western United States of America. There is no need actually to make the roads in these reservations, but the latter should be there before the country fills up, when it would be very much more difficult and costly to make them. By this means the country would become broken up into blocks of about a square mile each, so that every portion of land would have access to a public road, for of course where the blocks were to be sold in small lots, roads should also be reserved into the middle portions of them. In this way the purchaser of any kind of agricultural produce would have easy access to the places from which he has to buy it, or the producer easy access to the markets where he has to sell it, and so a considerable step would have been taken in agricultural progress, for the small producer cannot afford to w. 2 18 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I carry his produce long and toilsome journeys to market. This is a matter requiring early and careful consideration in all tropical countries, especially those with " spare " land. With the advent of the motor car and of the motor lorry, a new era seems to be about to dawn with regard to agricul- tural progress in the more rural districts, for these vehicles will be able to collect produce more rapidly, and from greater distances from the towns, than the horse or bullock vehicles as yet'in use upon the roads. j Railroads form a yet further stage^ in progress, and go, generally speaking, with an export trade.) They are now very largely developed in India, and to a considerable extent in Ceylon, the Federated Malay States, Brazil, the West Indian Islands, and Java, but in the remainder of the tropical zone they are in general conspicuous by their absence. ! To work a railroad with financial success of course means that there must be a pgnniffcrahL* amm-mf. nf mi 1 f.i vfl.t.mn in the country which requires to send its produo-fi t.n rh'st,fl.nfr ^jfrfif,«V-nTi1p.gg there is, as in the Federated Malay States, a considerable mining industry — and as yet this only exists in comparatively few countries. /In Brazil, the opening up of the country is done by railroads^-as much as, or more than, by roads.) Lastly, when by means of roads and railways the agricultural produce has reached the port, it must be carried away by some cheap and efficient means of transport. This is already provided for the great majority of tropical countries in the numerous lines of well appointed cargo steamships which ply almost throughout the world. We have not yet mentioned, except in connection with steamships, water carriage, which almost forms a genus of transport to itself. In a very large number of tropical coun- tries, the streams are sufficiently large, and free from rapids, to be available for the passage of at any rate small boats. Lower down larger boats or even steamers can ply upon them, and on the whole, though slow, this is perhaps the cheapest mode of transport, whilst also available at a very early stage in the development of a country. Thus it is that the great valley of the Amazon has been able to export many articles of produce CH. IV] TRANSPORT AND CAPITAL 19 in considerable quantities, though it is quite unprovided with a proper system of roads. Apart from this " natural " water carriage, there is also a very important form of water transport, in artificially made ditches or canals. This is very well seen in the coastal lands of the Federated Malay States, where the great sugar estates have cut extensive systems of canals, upon which the sugar cane is dragged to the factory in low open boats, and manure and other products are also transported. This method of trans- port is very valuable, and gives these estates a measurable advantage over those of the West Indies and Java, where the cane has to be carried by rail or by cart. Canals are largely developed in India, Ceylon (where they were made in Dutch times), Guiana, and elsewhere, and form a valuable means of transport for any but very perishable goods. Capital. This subject only requires a very brief mention, but must not be omitted, as agriculture largely depends upon the proper supply of capital ; so long as no capital is forthcoming, so long can there be nothing but the smallest peasant industries, so long can there be no export trade worth mentioning, and so long might the country, so far as the remainder of the world is concerned, just as well be non-existent. The great bulk of the capital sunk in large agricultural enterprises in the tropics is of course from Europe or America, The planting enterprises of Ceylon, India, Java, Hawaii, and other places are mainly financed from " home." At the same time, there is a small and steadily increasing amount of local capital available in the more wealthy tropical countries, like India, Brazil, and Java, and this capital is showing an increasing tendency to invest in agricultural industries. I Capital will not be invested in any country until there are, I satisfactory conditions as regards land, labour, and transport.) ' As will be pointed out elsewhere, these conditions were first fully satisfied in the old slavery days in the West Indies, and the great sugar industry sprang up there. With the abolition of slavery, labour ceased to be in a satisfactory state, and Ceylon, with plentiful cheap labour at her very doors, took the 2—2 20 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I place of the West Indies as a field for the investment of British capital, and has held it ever since, though many rivals have sprung up, especially, in recent years, the Federated Malay States, in which the great rubber-planting industry has grown to such dimensions. British capital is also bejusk invested, in greater or less amount, in the African colonies, and in Java, Sumatra, Brazil, and other foreign countries or settlements. Foreign capital mainly goes to the various foreign tropical colonies, especially the Dutch Indies. Brazil and other South American countries, and India, on the other hand, work mainly with local money, though it must be pointed out that the common people of India at least are very heavily indebted. Not only is capital required for the large enterprises, it is also required, in small quantity it is true, for the small, and the practically absolute lack of capital, even a few shillings, is the great bar to progress in village or peasant agriculture. Even as it is, in perhaps the majority of cases, the small crops growing upon the land are mortgaged to money-lenders, who have advanced small sums at a rate of interest from 40 °/0 upwards. Serious attempts to get over this difficulty are now being made in many parts of the tropics, usually by the establishment of Cooperative Credit Societies, upon the lines so successful in Europe. CHAPTER V DRAINAGE AND IRRIGATION As a rule, owing to the heavy nature of the rainfall, drainage is a matter of necessity in the tropics, more especially nearer to the equator, where more rain falls, and on irrigated land, where water is artificially supplied. While in North India drains of the kind seen in Europe are at times employed, as a rule, if there be any drains at all, they are simply open watercourses cut at intervals. On hilly ground they follow comparatively gentle slopes around the declivities, and do not run straight down the slopes. Occasionally, as for instance in the coastal region of the Malay Peninsula, such drains are not enough, on account of the very heavy rainfall, the very flat nature of the country, and its very slight elevation above sea level. In such cases large drains, often in fact small canals, have to be cut at fairly frequent intervals, and it becomes a matter of great importance, before opening land, to make sure that it will be possible to drain it. The first comers of course will be all right, but later comers may have to buy up land from their predecessors to get their own drains through to the sea or to a river. In such cases we have suggested that the Government should at an early date mark out the country into approximate squares of a mile or so by lines of reservation for drains (which would of course also ultimately supply canal transport), just as we have suggested for roads, so that a purchaser of land may find that it abuts somewhere upon a drainage reservation, along which the Government will then make a drain to convey away his surplus water. Of course in such cases land would only be sold near to existing drains, not far away back in the forest. 22 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I Irrigation is a matter of great importance in the tropics, because near the equator, where the rainfall is plentiful enough, the standard crop is rice, which requires definite irrigation, and because further away from the equator the rains only fall for part of the year, and are often uncertain, so that without a guaranteed water supply the raising of crops would be a very precarious matter. In some places, where there are no streams, the rain water is simply held in the fields by damming them up, but as a rule the water is obtained from the streams, little or big, in the neighbourhood, by damming them up by what are often called anicuts (weirs), and thus diverting the water into the fields. These anicuts may be of all sizes, from the tiny dams in use in southern Ceylon, of a few yards in length across a little brook, to the stupendous anicuts across some of the large rivers in India, and which irrigate hundreds of square miles, often at a great distance. By means of the anicut, the water of the stream, which would otherwise simply run to waste, is prevented from doing so before it has done all the irrigation required of it. It is diverted into a channel which only falls at the minimum slope, and is consequently made to water as much land as possible, to which it is conveyed by a system of canals and sluices. The canals continually subdivide, and form a system not unlike the branches of a tree. In the simple irrigation of a small valley, as in the low country of south Ceylon, no irrigation sluices or gates are definitely made, but the water is simply dammed up or diverted as required by hand labour with piles of mud. In the great irrigation works of India, on the other hand, most elaborate systems of gates, sluices, and canals are made, and the water is distributed through these under skilled super- intendence. At first the Indian Government only made the main channels, and left the cultivators to construct the minor channels for the actual distribution, but this led to great abuses and serious waste, and now the whole system of canals is made by the Government in the first instance. Where the water has thus been provided by the Government CH. V] DRAINAGE AND IRRIGATION 23 at a great cost, an irrigation rate is charged upon all the land watered by it, and in many parts of India the irrigation works pay a good dividend through these rates. Thus in parts of Madras, the rate is Ks. 7| (los.) an acre a year, and for this a certain fixed amount of water is allowed. In the south of Ceylon, on the other hand, where the work of making the irrigation dams, etc., is simple and cheap, and is done by the people themselves, there is a terrible waste of water, though luckily there is so much rain that this very rarely matters. One of the most wonderful systems of irrigation that ever existed is that which was put into practice in the north of Ceylon in the early days of the Sinhalese monarchy, 2000 years ago, which fell into entire ruin during the Tamil invasions from 700 to 1300 A.D., and which is now, at great cost, being slowly restored by the Ceylon Government. The north of Ceylon is a " dry " country, i.e. it only gets rain for about four months in the year, and must have irrigation. Almost every valley was dammed up, the country being gently rolling, by an earthwork or " bund " within 20 or 30 miles of its head, and other bunds, gradually getting longer and longer, and less and less high as the sea was approached, were made across the valley at intervals of a few miles, lower down. During the rainy season these reservoirs became filled. The overflow from the first "tank" (to give the reservoirs the name by which they are known in Ceylon), together with 'the waste water from the rice fields below it, was of course caught in the second tank, and so on. Not only so, but from the uppermost tank a canal was taken at the highest possible level, winding round the side valleys at as gentle a slope as possible, and feeding the tanks that were also made in these valleys. In this way almost the whole of every valley was made irrigable, and there was practically no water allowed to reach the sea until it had done the maximum of work. Some of the tanks were of enormous size ; Kalawewa, for example, now restored, has a bund about 6 miles long, and 60 feet high at the centre of the valley, while the tank is about 5 miles by 2, and in the old days, when the water was retained at a higher level, was about three times that size, while other tanks are even larger. The canal on the north side of Kalawewa 24 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I runs for 55 miles along the side valleys, feeding all their tanks, and is about 60 feet wide, j In many districts irrigation has to be from wells, and every form of appliance is in use, from simple hand carriage of the water — the well being made with a sloping side to enable one to walk down to the water — through more and more perfect raising implements worked by bullocks or by well sweeps, to modern continuous chain pumps, etc. This form of irrigation is particularly suited to gardening work, tobacco or vegetable cultivation, and so on, and the arrangements for distributing the water are often very perfect, the " flower beds " — if such a term may be used, — being made with little banks round them, and the water led to them in little canals. Irrigation by windmill-pumps, such as is so common in the United States, is almost unknown in the tropics, for the wind in the driest wreather is often absent, and blows hardest in the rains. Partly in consequence of this, pumps worked by oil or gas engines are coming in in some places. The necessary concomitant of irrigation is drainage, and care must be taken to give the soil no more water than will drain away before the next application of water. Heavy clayey soils are thus in general unsuited to irrigation, which succeeds better on friable soils. A good deal of trouble some- times arises from the top layers of the soil becoming alkaline, often for want of proper drainage. Irrigation results in good and reliable cropping, but is of course exhaustive to the soil, which will probably want manure much sooner1. 1 As many who have read the manuscript have complained of the absence of description of the irrigation works of Egypt, the north of India, South Africa, etc., the opportunity may be taken to point out that none of these are tropical. CHAPTEE VI TOOLS, TILLAGE, MANURING, CROPPING, ETC. • Tools. The more complex and efficient tools, such as are so largely superseding hand labour in Europe and America, are but little employed in the tropics. The reasons for this are several, the chief being that hand labour has hitherto been so cheap that there has been but little demand for labour saving, that the complex tools require good workmen to use them, and good mechanics to mend them, neither being readily forth- coming in the tropics, and that the better tools are in general too expensive for the ordinary cultivator to buy, while coopera- tive purchase, such as is so common in France, Belgium, and other countries, has not yet come in. For simple tillage of the ground, the most common tool in the more equatorial countries is probably the large hoe, or m3,moti, as it is called by the Tamil coolies of Ceylon, while further north the plough is far more common. The mamoti is a very strong and heavy hoe, with a handle about 3 feet long, and a blade at right angles to it, 9 inches wide, and 7 inches deep, but varying according to the work it is designed for, those used in wet rice fields, for instance, being much larger and with longer handles. With it the coolie digs, by swinging it like a pickaxe, and he also uses it for gentle digging, scraping, and for other purposes. The spade is hardly ever used. The plough, used in India and tropical America, and in rice cultivation in the equatorial countries, is usually a primitive instrument, as a glance at Plate XXII will show. It consists essentially of two pieces of wood fastened together at right angles, with a metal point to the horizontal one, and drawn by 26 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. 1 | bullocks in dry fields, buffaloes in wet ones. It performs its work, however, with some degree of efficiency, and is both very- cheap and very easy to. mend if anything should go wrong, two- points which appeal with very great force to the ordinary tropical villager, with little or no money, and far from any skilled help. It does not however cultivate deeply, but only to a depth of 3 — 8 inches, and does not turn the soil over. Cultivators, in the American sense of the word, i.e. machines with a number of teeth to tear up the soil, and drawn along by hand or by horses or bullocks, are as yet but little employed r being too complex, too expensive, and too difficult to mend for; the ordinary villager to use them, and but little wanted yet on the ordinary European estate, on account of the cheapness of hand labour. Locally made cultivators, with the parts of wood V tied together with string, are, however, in use in parts of | Madras and elsewhere in India, as also are locally made seed- drills and other tools. The harrow is commonly replaced by a log of wood with or without a horizontal metal blade in front \ of it, drawn across the field, and increased in weight by the driver standing upon it. The pickaxe is commonly used for digging holes, removing / stone, and for similar purposes. The rake is also not uncommonly used, in the same way as in Europe. A very useful tool, especially in the West Indies, is the cutlass, with which weeds- are cut down, trees pruned or lopped, and even holes dug. Grain is usually cut with the sickle, and in fact all tools are both simple and primitive in most places. Manuring is in general just as necessary in the tropics as in the temperate zones, if good results are to be obtained for any length of time on the same ground, and it is the saving of the cost and trouble of manuring which is one of the most attractive features to the ordinary unthinking villager in the practice of chena, described in Chapter I. Both European planters and natives alike prefer to get new forest land to plant i upon, for it is so much richer in plant food, but of course such land becomes every year more and more scarce, and in general it may be said that every tropical cultivation requires manure. CH. Vl] TOOLS, TILLAGE, MANURING, CROPPING, ETC. 27 Whether it gets the manure, however much it may require it, is a question of another kind. Perhaps the majority of tropical natives are unable to afford any manure worth mention. For instance those of the greater part of India use cow dung, which is almost the only available manure, as fuel, and have little else that could be used for this purpose. The slow but certain result is the gradual impoverishment of the soil to the lowest stage of productive capacity that its natural constitution will permit. Even in a country like Ceylon, where vegetable matter is cheap and easily obtained, manuring is by no means common among the natives, though in the far north of the island large quantities of green stuff of various kinds are collected for manuring purposes. But on European planting estates a different state of things is evident, especially in the East, where for years the planters have had the advantage of skilled scientific advice in manuring. Nearly all Ceylon tea* estates are now manured with great care and economy, with the result that the export of tea, which seemed to be reaching its maximum at about 135 millions of pounds, has gone up to a new maximum of about 190 millions. In India too, tea manuring has reached a high pitch of perfection, and in the West Indies manuring is carefully applied to sugar, cacao and other plantations, in South America to coffee, etc. WThile in general farm-yard manure is the beat, in practice there is not enough of it, and artificial manures, such as bone-dust, basic slag, cottoa-seed cake, etc., are used. The constituents usually lacking in soils are lime, potash, and nitrogen. A method of manuring, which is very popular in Ceylon, Java, and India, is what is called "green manuring." This consists in growing, between the rows of the permanent crop, rows or broadcasts of some plant belonging to the family of the Leguminosae (peas, beans, clovers, vetches, etc.), which have the property of taking up nitrogen (a constituent in which the soils of the tropics, owing to their lack of humus, are generally deficient) from the air. After they have grown to full size, the plants are cut down, and oftenest ploughed or dug 28 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I into the ground. In this way they increase the contents of the soil in organic matter and nitrogen at a very small cost. K Another very common method of manuring in the East is ! folding cattle, goats, or sheep upon the land, during the drier | weather. A flock of 100 sheep will sufficiently manure an acre S in about 20 nights. Rotation of Crops, with which so much is done to get better returns in agriculture in colder climates, is systematically practised in Java, Ceylon, India, the West Indies, etc. The great difficulty in the way of its general practice is the fact that so many of the tropical crops, e.g. tea, coffee, rubber, cacao, coconuts, are perennials, and consequently rotation is impossible with them, or that they are crops like rice, with which rotation is difficult. In Java the rice crop is regularly rotated with various vegetable and other crops grown on the fields when dry. Mixture of Crops, which seems to bring in its train some of the advantages of rotation, is very common, especially in the more equatorial parts of the tropics, such as southern Ceylon, Malaya, the West Indies, etc. In Ceylon, for example, the great bulk of the country inhabited by the Sinhalese may be roughly divided into " high lands " and " paddy (rice) fields," the former being the higher lying lands, the ridges between the valleys in fact (PI. Ill, p. 46), which cannot be reached by the irrigation water. Upon them the villagers grow a great mixture of crops, from trees such as coconuts, mangoes, jaks, silk-cottons, kituls, etc., down to herbaceous plants such as yams, etc. Usually they leave the ground covered with a miscellaneous turf of weeds and grass, and the cattle graze upon it. The plants are not arranged in any definite way, nor are two of the same kind necessarily put together, but they are simply left anyhow upon the land, much as they might grow in a jungle containing only those species. Now the various plants of course take different quantities of food stuffs from the soil — some take much lime, some little, some much potash, some little, and so on, so that it is quite probable that the total result is to drain the soil of its food materials at a rate proportionate to what it can supply, CH. VI] TOOLS, TILLAGE, MANURING, CROPPING, ETC. 29 and thus to exhaust it at a far slower rate than would one \ single crop, which would use up some single constituent of the soil at a rapid rate. In fact, the group of plants growing on \ the soil forms a " plant society " like the natural plant societies that grow on any piece of soil left to nature. On a moor in Scotland, for instance, there may be a very large amount of heather, a small amount of bell-heather, and smaller amounts of rockrose and many other plants, and on any two similar pieces of ground the same plants will always be found in about the same proportions. Now rough observation shows that something not unlike this is the case in these mixed gardens of the villagers, they nearly always containing the same plants, and in not dissimilar amounts. It must not for a moment be supposed, however, that the villager has adopted this method of "cultivation" with any advantages of this kind in view, but rather it is that by using this method, the troublesome labour of cultivation is practically entirely done away with, for he never tills the soil among his mixed crops. Though his return is very small from this method of cultivation, it is probable, therefore, that he gets one of the two great advantages of rotation, though of course he loses the other, of the proper tillage of the ground for which opportunity is given by the change of crop, for example from wheat to roots. Not only is there this mixture of perennial crops, but\ mixture of annuals is very common in the East : pulses are \ sown among the grain, different kinds of grain with one another, y and so on. Here again the gain is somewhat like that obtained with rotation, or the season may suit one and not the other, so that there is not a total failure, CHAPTER VII PLANT LIFE IN THE TROPICS. ACCLIMATISATION THE agriculturist coming from Europe to the tropics must entirely alter his point of view in regarding the vegetable world. No longer is there any interruption of the growth and activity of the plants by a winter. On the other hand, such interruption as there is comes rather in the hottest part of the year, -the dry season. Near to the equator the dry seasons are so short that vegetation goes on almost uninterruptedly, but further to the north or the south, there is a dry season, of length increasing as we get further from the equator, and in this season the growth of the plants is little or none. Where there is a really long dry season, as in northern India, irrigation, as already explained, is a necessity if crops are to be grown for more than a compara- tively small portion of the year. The agriculturist must learn, not only what are the most suitable times of the year for sowing and for planting out — usually the wet seasons — but he must learn to perform all the other operations of husbandry — pruning, manuring, cropping, etc. — with reference to the seasons. In most of Ceylon, for instance, the great planting season is October-November, and annual crops are reaped in February-March. The tropics possess, generally speaking, a great many species of plants. Even Ceylon, only five-sixths the size of Ireland, possesses more than twice as many as the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. And on the whole, perhaps, they similarly outnumber the temperate zones in the number of useful cultivable plants; but in any one country there are usually but few, and there are many others which may be CH. VII] PLANT LIFE IN THE TROPICS. ACCLIMATISATION 31 brought in and made to grow satisfactorily there, or " acclima- tised," as it is called. Acclimatisation of plants in the tropics is very old. It has been very vigorously prosecuted, and with great success, from the first settlements there of Europeans, the Portuguese having been especially active in this respect. Plants were very early carried from the New World — especially the West Indies — to the Old, and vice versa. Coffee was introduced to America, it is said, by Louis XIV of France, who sent a ship out to Hayti with a single plant on board. On the way the water supply ran short, and the captain heroically shared his own water with the plant, and brought it successfully to the West Indies. It is said that the mangoes in some of the West Indian islands owe their introduction to the capture of a French warship, which was taking them to one of the French islands. A vast amount of acclimatisation has gone on, and in many cases the acclimatised plants have formed the basis of successful industries in their adopted homes, e.g. coffee (Asia, Africa) in Brazil, tea (Chinese and N. Indian), cinchona and cacao (South American) in Ceylon, rubber (South American) in Ceylon and Malaya. Not only have useful plants been acclimatised, but also innumerable weeds, usually carried unintentionally in packages of seeds, etc. Ceylon has quite a large flora of such weeds, which are almost all Mexican or West Indian, the reason apparently being that Ceylon being a forest-clad country had no weeds of its own which could take their place in the cleared ground, so that those introduced from open countries had a clear field. With the advent to the tropics of the Dutch, and later of the English, the acclimatisation of plants was put upon a scientific and systematic footing, Botanic Gardens being opened in most of the tropical possessions for the express purpose, among others, of introducing, and trying experiments with, the plants of other countries. The history of the Ceylon gardens, perhaps the most successful of all in the British colonies, will illustrate the general history of all. The famous gardens of Peradeniya, near Kandy, in the central province of Ceylon, were opened in their present site in 1821. Concerned until about \ 1850 mainly with the investigation of the wild flora of the 32 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. 1 colony, they began about that time to introduce in considerable number the useful plants of other countries. Among the many valuable things introduced, mention need only be made of r cinchona — introduced in 1861, and forming the staple industry r of Ceylon for many years — of cacao — also an important industry i in the island — of tea, now the staple export industry of the colony, originally introduced by the gardens in 1832 or earlier, but subsequently mainly brought in by private agency, and of I rubber, introduced from South America by the Indian Govern- ment, aided by the Botanic Gardens of Kew, and now rapidly becoming the second or third most important industry in Ceylon. Without the aid of the Botanic Gardens, Ceylon would have remained a small and unimportant "native" possession. In the same way the West Indies owe many of their most valuable crops to the Botanic Gardens there, and the Malay Peninsula is becoming a rubber-country as the result of the work done in the gardens of Singapore. But, for the future,, this acclimatisation work will be done mainly in the new countries, e.g. in tropical Africa, where cacao, introduced only a few years ago, is already a very important industry. It is obvious that as time goes on, this introduction and acclimatisation of foreign products in any one colony or posses- sion must decrease in importance, for the simple reason that most of the new products that can possibly be brought in are now introduced, and the chance of finding anything of great value becomes less with every year. Thus during the last twenty years the Ceylon gardens have not been able to intro- duce anything of much value, though they have been able to bring in a few minor fruits, shade trees, and other things, and during the present century great changes have come over the organisation of the establishment, which has expanded into a department of agriculture, to suit the changed needs of the colony. The work of the colonial botanic gardens has of course been mainly cooperative, the gardens exchanging plants with one another, aided in the exchange by the central garden of Kew. But, just as the acclimatisation work of the larger colonies, at any rate, has sunk into comparative unimportance, and as the CH. VII] PLANT LIFE IN THE TROPICS. ACCLIMATISATION 33 facilities for direct shipment of plants from one part of the globe to another have increased, so the exchange work of Kew has decreased in importance to the larger colonies. The old cry for new products — that is, products not as yet cultivated in the country — must now be modified. Ceylon is an interesting case in point. At one time coffee formed 95°/0 of the value of her exports. Tea, which has taken the place of coffee in the mountains, though it covers a larger area than coffee ever did, now only forms about 32 °/0 of the value of the exports. In addition to this, Ceylon cultivates on a commercial scale, rice (not for export), coconut palms, palmyra palms, cacao, rubber, citronella oil, cinnamon, cardamoms, coffee, tobacco, besides smaller (but usually growing) areas of camphor, vanilla, \ coca, lemongrass, cotton, nutmegs, cinchona, annatto, cassava, fruits1 and vegetables1, a very varied and imposing list of pro- ducts. There are now practically no new products of the old kind which can be introduced into the country, and in which, as was the case in tea, the competition is only with the products of the tropical or sub-tropical races of mankind, or, as is the case in rubber, with the product of wild jungle trees, collected by very rough 'methods. Almost everything of value in tropical agriculture is now in the hands, somewhere or another, of Europeans, Americans, Chinese or Japanese, and in starting any new product in any country a fierce competition will have to be met from countries already growing that product. 1 I.e. for export ; there are large areas devoted to growing these products for home consumption. CHAPTER VIII AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS IN PRIMITIVE TIMES, AND ITS GRADUAL CHANGE BEFORE the advent of the European races to the tropics, agriculture may almost fairly be called non-existent there, except in the more civilised countries such as India, by reason of the comparatively savage habits of most of their inhabitants. It is not intended to imply that nothing was cultivated, for that would be entirely incorrect, but that no systematic and regular cultivations were engaged in. As in early days there was practically no export trade, the products cultivated were of course in general those that could be used in the countries themselves, such as rice, yams, fibres, drugs, oils, etc. It must also be remembered, that, as pointed out in Chapter VII, as there was then little or no intercourse between the different countries in the tropics, the supply of useful plants was far less varied than it now is. Rice, for instance, was probably unknown outside of Indo -Malaya. In general, then, the principle upon which early agriculture was conducted was of the simplest — grow all you need, and con- sume all you grow. And in very many countries in the tropics agriculture as yet has practically not got beyond this stage. In the older and more civilised countries however, such as India or Ceylon, matters have always been more complex than this, owing to the presence of land owners and other capitalists. Upon the land belonging to such people, the poorer villager has in some countries had to work as a slave, in others has had to rent the land for his own use, usually on a system of shares, the owner taking say 50% of the crop as rent. In yet other cases, CH. VIII] AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS IN PRIMITIVE TIMES 35 the villager has perhaps owned his own land, but has had to pay a heavy tax to the chief of the district. A relic of such taxation was kept up in Ceylon until about thirty years ago, the villager having to pay to the government 10°/0 of the rice that he grew. Almost the only countries where agriculture was carried on in any systematic way in early times were those inhabited by the Indian races (India, Ceylon, etc.), where agriculture has always been counted an honourable profession, and where the cultivators were usually among the highest castes of all. It appears also to have been of some importance in tropical America (Mexico, Peru, etc.) prior to the advent of the Spaniards. Partly perhaps in consequence of the unsettled nature of the country, and the risk attaching to the cultivator who should settle down in one place to cultivate any crops for a long period of time, the system of chena or ladang cultivation briefly described in the first chapter sprang up and became of much importance, though of course it is obvious that the first clearings in any forest-covered country must be of the nature of chena. To this day, it is one of the standing minor grievances of the eastern native against the British government that he is not allowed free and unrestricted chena in the crown lands. The fact that such practices are utterly destructive of the natural capital of the country does not in any way appeal to him — so long as there is land left to chena he considers that he should be allowed to chena it. In the more densely peopled districts and countries the practice has gone out perforce, but in more thinly peopled places it is extremely popular. The most common argument in favour of chena used by natives of countries in which it goes on is that the land is so poor that it will not allow of any other method of cultivation. This is disproved by the fact that in places where chena used formerly to be common, as for instance in the western province of Ceylon, it has now gone out, and the land is continuously cultivated, by the success of European planting enterprises in chena countries, and by actual experiment, as at Maha- iluppalama in Ceylon, where land in the midst of a chena district has proved to be capable of continuous cultivation. 3—2 36 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I In very early times there was a small trade, at first chiefly overland, later in Moorish or Persian ships across the Indian ocean, in the products of eastern countries, chiefly spices, for which high prices used to be given, but this trade was extremely small, and most of the spices were not cultivated, but obtained from wild plants. Though the early practices of agriculture yet survive in many eastern and other countries, the whole conditions have been altered by the appearance in the tropics of the white races of the north. Apart from their direct influence upon agriculture, their presence, and the settled government which they have brought with them, and which would seem to be a thing out- side the capacity of the tropical races, has enabled the simple village agriculture of former times to extend and spread tin all directions with the growth of population, until now, in Java, India, and Ceylon, for instance, there is far more of it than there ever was in primitive times. From very early times, the existence of the nations of Europe, as above explained, has caused a slight trade mainly in spices, but the want of proper transport facilities, among other things, checked the development of any large or important trade. Transport by water was of course the first to become important, and hence the first places in the tropics to be opened up were the islands, such as Ceylon and the West Indies, coast places, such as Madras, and the valleys of the great rivers, such as the Amazon. When the sailors of Portugal and other European nations had found the way to India and the East, and to the West Indies, they brought the markets of the north for the first time really within the reach of the people of the tropics. Very much the same process went on in all places, and is going on to-day, as the recent history of the West African coast illus- trates. 'The first stage is the establishment of factories and trading settlements at the river mouths, which buy the produce grown in the interior by the natives, and export it. The general inefficiency of the natives and their methods, and the insecurity and dangers to which the traders are exposed next leads to the conquest and opening up of the country. Nowadays such work CH. VIIl] IN PRIMITIVE TIMES 37 is generally done by the Government, and the conquered country is treated as a colony, but formerly, as in the case of the East India Company, the exploitation or development of the country was often placed in the hands of a great trading company. Such in general have been the methods in which English and Dutch colonies in the tropics have been formed, whereas in the case of the Spanish or Portuguese colonies of an earlier date, the usual method was simple conquest at the very first. The trading companies, and after them the Governments, of the eastern colonies, for a long time worked upon very crude principles, usually endeavouring to establish monopolies and keep out competitors, as was for instance the case for many years with the cinnamon culture in Ceylon (see pp. 82, 86, 87). Once Europeans had entered the countries of the tropics in the capacity of masters, the introduction of the more modern systems of agriculture was assured. The first great development in agriculture in the tropics was of course the sugar trade of the West Indies, which was worked by European planters with the aid of slave labour. The next was the coffee industry of Ceylon. \ In general, the alteration brought about by Europeans in native agriculture may be almost said to be due to their development of improved methods of transport. The old native countries had practically no methods of transport but by coolie or bullock carriage and by water. The Europeans introduced good roads, then railways, and often canals, which have opened up the countries, and made agriculture for the purposes of export at last reasonably possible. The invasion of the European races also altered finance in the tropical countries. At first the white races were merely in trading settlements at the mouths of the rivers, but they were not long content simply to trade with the natives. Very soon an exploitation of the countries began, with the aid of European capital. Later the whites conquered the countries, and wanted to settle in and cultivate them themselves, as the only means to ensure large and regular supplies for export. The first example of this kind of thing, as already indicated, was the great sugar industry of the West Indies, where the white planters set them- selves to cultivate sugar with the aid of slave labour imported 38 AGRICULTUKE IN THE TROPICS [PT. I from Africa. This was for a long time a very prosperous under- taking, but was terribly thrown back by the liberation of the slaves, and so far as the British West Indies are concerned, has hardly yet recovered its lost ground. The abolition of slavery practically threw the West Indies out of the competition, which was now beginning, in tropical agriculture under European management, and the countries with cheap labour came to the fore, more especially Ceylon, which now began to develope its great coffee industry. India and Java also have taken a great part in this development. The history of agriculture in the British colonies has practi- cally been the history of the planting enterprises, whereas in Java the Dutch put into operation the famous "culture system" of van den Bosch, compelling the natives to give a part of their , land and a part of their labour to the cultivation of " export " products, such as indigo, sugar, and coffee. This system1, which is now all but extinct, had a great vogue for many years, and appears to have had no small share in making Java such a nation of comparatively energetic and skilful cultivators as it now is. Ceylon, generally speaking, has led the way in the various European planting enterprises — first with coffee, then with cinchona, cacao, tea, cardamoms, rubber, and other things. . The West Indies have cultivated sugar, fruits, tobacco, and of -. late cotton. India has had successful planting enterprises in v indigo, tea and coffee, Java in sugar, cinchona, spices, tobacco, ry tea and coffee, the Sandwich Islands in sugar, West Africa in cacao, South America in coffee, cacao, etc., and so on. The great development of European planting enterprise in the more civilised and opened up countries has of course quite revolutionised the primitive agriculture or rather has built up a modern agriculture beside it. Though there is still much of it, probably more than in primitive times, it is now quite overshadowed in importance to the world at large by the European enterprises, which provide the material for a large export trade. Whether planting in the tropics will always continue to be under European management is another question, but the northern powers will not permit that the rich and as 1 For details, see Part III, Chapter n. CH. VIIl] IN PRIMITIVE TIMES 39 yet comparatively undeveloped countries of the tropics should be wasted for them by being devoted merely to the supply of the food and clothing wants of their own people, when they can also supply the wants of the colder zones in so many indispensable products. The success of the European planters has had the effect of stimulating the natives in many places to imitation or rivalry, and in Ceylon, for instance, there are now a large number of \ native planters, cultivating mainly coconuts, but also engaging f in the tea, rubber, and other industries. And the number of \ such men continues to increase. In Southern Brazil the great coffee industry is mainly in the hands of Brazilian natives, but these are so largely pure white men that for the purpose of this chapter they may be regarded as Europeans, from whom they are of course descended. In India and West Africa various " commercial " industries are entirely in native hands. PART II THE PRINCIPAL CULTIVATIONS OF THE TROPICS CHAPTER I RICE AND OTHER CEREALS AND FOOD PLANTS Rice. This is one of the oldest and most important cultivations in the world, this grain forming the staple of the food of the Chinese and Japanese, the southern races of India, the Malay and Javanese, and other races, besides being very largely consumed in temperate climates. In recent years its cultivation has also been undertaken by white men, in the \ southern United States, with very good results, the yield obtained by the use of machinery being greater in proportion to the cost of the labour than that obtained in the tropics. The varieties in which rice (Oryza sativa) is found to occur are legion, especially in India, where almost every district has its own. This is probably due to the fact that there has been but little intercourse, or exchange of seed, between the different districts. The two main kinds of rice are " hill " and " swamp," the former growing without special irrigation and up to a greater height in the mountains, the latter more a lowland and irrigated form. The former is now mostly grown by the semi-wild races, such as the Indian hill-tribes, the Sakeis of the Malay Peninsula, and others. Among the swamp rices one of the most important vari- etal distinctions, from a practical point of view, is the time required from sowing to reaping; thus there are "three-month," CH. I] RICE AND OTHER CEREALS AND FOOD PLANTS 41 " four-month," etc. rices, up to six and nine month. It is almost needless to point out that the yield is in general greater the longer the ripening period, but of course the kind grown in any one district must depend on the length of time during which water is available. Six-month rice will be useless if there is only water for four months. Swamp rice requires to grow in a few inches of water until its seeds are all but ripe, consequently it needs to be cultivated in fields which are enclosed in little banks of earth to prevent the water from getting away, and to have regular irri- gation provided for it, even in wet countries. The most economical districts for rice cultivation, therefore, other things being equal, are the great flat alluvial lands about the lower courses of the large rivers, as in Bengal, Madras, and Lower Burma, but rice can be cultivated anywhere that there is water available, and the soil suitable. On the large flats the fields can be correspondingly large, while as we get into more rolling country they become smaller, and require m$re terracing, until at last, in really hilly country, the fields become very small, often not more than a few square yards, and irregular in shape, and exhibit marvels of terracing, as may be seen in the picture of the terracing in the Kandyan country of Ceylon (Plate I). In these terraced fields, of course, the water is passed down from one field to another, but to bring it to the topmost field often requires considerable engineering feats, the water being brought for long distances in channels winding round the faces of the hills. These channels often run for miles over very difficult pieces of mountain country. In some places there are no streams that can be impounded for purposes of irrigation, and the rice has to be grown with the ordinary rainfall, the rain being simply retained in the fields by the banking up of their edges. Being the cultivation of the national food, and a cultivation of almost immemorial antiquity, the growth of rice in Indo- Malaya is hedged round with many superstitious observances, which differ from country to country. A brief description of some of the ceremonies observed by the Kandyans or moun- taineers of Ceylon may perhaps suffice as an indication of 42 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II these. "The goiya (cultivator) presents himself before the Neket-rala (village astrologer) on a Monday or a Wednesday with the customary offering of forty betel leaves and areca nuts, and expresses his wishes in a humble attitude. The Neket-rala then informs his petitioner, after certain astrological calculations, of the circumstances upon which the success or failure of his undertaking depends. On an auspicious day (according to the Neket-rala) the goiya, after partaking of the morning meal, wends his way to his land with a mamoti (see above, a kind of hoe), his face turned towards the favourable direction of the horizon as indicated by the astrologer. Should the goiya on this journey encounter sights or sounds which portend failure, e.g. the hooting of an owl, the cry of a house lizard, the growling of a dog, the sight of persons carrying weapons capable of inflicting injury, etc., he immediately turns back and retraces his steps homewards. Again the Neket-rala has to be approached in the manner before described, and consulted as to a lucky hour. Were the goiya to meet with a milk cow, vessels filled with water, men dressed in white, etc., when he sets out towards his land, it is considered very propitious On the following day the goiya entertains such of his fellow- villagers with rice-cakes, milk-rice, etc. as are willing to cooperate with him in the cultivation of his field. At the lucky hour, these villagers armed with mamoties proceed to the land, headed by the owner, and turning their faces in the direction of Adam's Peak give out the cry of Ha pura hodai (Ha, a good beginning) "When the field is ready for sowing, on the advent of a lucky hour, the goiya leaves his dwelling after having recited a number of religious stanzas, bearing an areca-nut flower and a pata (handful with the fingers stretched out) of paddy (rice in the husk). Having arrived at his field, with his eyes turned towards the favourable region of the sky, he buries the paddy in a corner of a ridge, having first moulded the earth at the spot so as to resemble a peculiarly shaped symbolic figure, and lays the areca-nut flower on the top of the mound The High Priest of Kotmale Pansala informed me that the areca-nut flowers were intended as an offering to the gods, who are held to CH. I] RICE AND OTHER CEREALS AND FOOD PLANTS 43 have a great love for them, while the paddy is believed to be taken away to provide for a meal. " The time of ploughing is one of great solemnity to the Kandyan paddy cultivator. The Neket-rala is again consulted for the purpose of finding a lucky hour " Thinning is done by the women when the paddy is about three months old No one dare cross the ridges with an open umbrella while the women are at work, unless there be urgent need for so doing, and permission be first obtained, otherwise mud, etc. are thrown on the intruder, whoever he be. " Paddy is liable to be attacked by a grub... which sucks the juices of the plant In the Anuradhapura district, sand, after being 'charmed/ is scattered over the field, and offerings are made to Jyan and Abimana Dewiyos with a view to inducing their intercession to stay the ravages of the pest "When the paddy is approaching maturity, other cere- monies are gone through ; the goiya after purification places three ears of grain on a leaf of the Bo tree, which is held in great veneration for reasons too well known to need mention1, and buries them in the kalavita or threshing floor, at the same time chanting some mystic words, invoking the gods to protect the crop from flood, fire, birds, and wild beasts The Neket- rala, attired in fantastic dress, describes a peculiarly shaped figure with ashes on the kalavita with a view to preventing sorcery and other evil influences Another rite of a peculiar nature follows this It consists of digging a circular hole in the field and placing inside a model of the sacred footprint of Buddha, a husked coconut, a creeping plant, clusters of areca nuts, leaves from the hiraspalu and tolabo, and covering these with about three bundles of straw2." When such complicated ceremonies are gone through for such simple operations as are involved in the cultivation of rice, it is not surprising to find that the methods of cultivation are 1 This tree (Ficus religiosa) was that under whose shade Gautama attained his Buddhahood. Almost the oldest tree in the world of which there is any historical record is the sacred Bo at Anuradhapura in Ceylon, planted there in 288 B.C. 2 Ceremonies observed by the Kandyans in Paddy Cultivation, T. B. Pohath- Kehelpannala, Journ. Anthrop. Inst. November, 1895. 44 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II themselves very old and leave much to be desired in economy and efficiency. Not only so, but each country adheres rigidly to its own methods, and refuses even to try those of another country. Ceylon is very backward in that the method of sowing is by broadcasting, while Java, which is very advanced in the careful transplanting of the rice, and the rotation of crops upon the rice fields, adheres to the system of cutting each ear separately with a penknife, at enormous labour cost. A brief description of some of the methods of cultivation may be useful, but it must be remembered that each country has its own. Two crops of rice are obtained every year in the wet districts of Ceylon, but as a rule only one from any one field. The fields are allowed to be thoroughly saturated by the heavy rains of the commencement of the monsoon, and are then turned over with the mamoti, and ploughed with a primitive plough. They are then puddled, usually with the feet, or with a mamoti, and levelled over into a thin creamy paste, on which the seed is sown by broadcasting — a most wasteful method, but one, which being the "custom," and comparatively cheap as regards labour, is rigidly adhered to. When the seed has germinated, the water is admitted again, and the rice left to grow, with perhaps an occasional weeding, until harvest time, when as the grain ripens, the water is once more turned off, so that the final ripening is done upon dry ground. The crops are so timed that this ripening shall take place in the drier weather of the monsoon, i.e. from January to March, or from July to September. The grain is harvested with sickles, and heaped into small stacks. It is threshed in the same old way that is described for corn in the Bible, by being laid upon the ground, and bullocks driven round over it. It is then winnowed in an equally primitive fashion, by being thrown up into the air from flat basketwork trays, and caught again, the chaff being blown away meanwhile. In Madras the general systems of cultivation are not unlike those in Ceylon, but more efficient, and the yield is greater. About 11,500,000 acres are devoted to rice, or fifteen times CH. l] RICE AND OTHER CEREALS AND FOOD PLANTS 45 as much as in Ceylon. Manuring, especially in the form of cattle-penning on the land, is employed, but generally only when two crops are to be taken off the land in one year. In Burmah there is a very large area given to rice, the yield is good, and the annual production is perhaps 5,500,000 tons, a large quantity being exported (1,750,000 tons). In Bombay the yield is on the whole larger than in Madras, and manuring, both heavy and rdb, is carefully practised. The latter consists in growing the young plants upon seed-beds on which a mixture of dung, leaves, rubbish, etc., has been slowly burnt. Bengal, though most of it is not, strictly speaking, within the tropics, is one of the greatest rice-growing countries of the world, and as the bulk of the rice is grown in the summer, we may for the nonce regard it as tropical. Three main varieties of rice are grown, aus, the early crop, sown in spring and reaped in August and September, aman, the main crop, sown in April- June, and reaped November-January, and boro, reaped in the spring. Aman is by far the most important. It is some- times sown broadcast, sometimes transplanted, and is not infrequently, especially in jute districts, rotated with* jute, etc., the order often being rice, pulse or oilseed, jute, pulse or oilseed, rice. What manure is available is carefully applied. About a third of the 75 million acres of rice in India are in Bengal, which exports about 200,000 tons to other countries. Java is also a great rice-growing country, and exports about V 40,000 tons of rice a year. Owing to the hilly configuration of the island, the rice is mainly grown on small terraced fields, as in Ceylon. As soon as the crop has been gathered, the water is allowed into the fields sufficiently to soften them, and they < are then cultivated with every kind of vegetable, prominent among these being sweet potatoes, which by the way are the only rotation crop employed in Ceylon. Siam and French Indo-China are also great rice-growing \ countries ; the latter exports about 1,360,000 tons a year. In recent years, with the influx of Indian coolies, and their partial settlement, rice has become an important article of cultivation in Mauritius, Guiana, Trinidad and elsewhere. 46 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II British Guiana is already exporting this grain. Brazil also grows a large area of rice, exporting 135,000 tons in 1920. The yields of rice obtained differ very much from country to country. In Ceylon about 700 Ibs. per acre is probably the average in the more thickly populated districts, in India probably 990 Ibs., while in the Malay Peninsula about 2000 Ibs. is often obtained, and in the Tinnevelli district of southern India even more, so that in 1903 the best rice land there was selling for Rs. 2000 per acre (£133). The natives of these countries, however, do not regard rice cultivation from a commercial point of view, and there is not the least likelihood of their giving it up in favour of anything more profitable. Rice is a somewhat difficult grain to husk. The common method in Ceylon and elsewhere is by means of a heavy pestle and wooden mortar, -while in much of India it is first parboiled and dried, and then husked in the same way. Nothing is more striking to the outside observer than the obstinate way in which the natives of each country cling to their own particular methods. In Ceylon they object to trans- planting on the ground of its greater expense, the fact being that though it uses less seed, it costs more in labour. In Java, on the other hand, they transplant the rice most carefully, and treat it with great care and efficiency, but when it comes to the harvesting, they cut each ear separately with what is practically a penknife. Yet, in spite of all effort, this custom is rigidly adhered to, as the harvest time is the great festive season, when all the villagers turn out into each field in turn, well dressed, and engagements are then mostly contracted between the young people. One great difficulty in the way of any improvement being introduced by Europeans into this cultivation is the fact that there are hundreds of very small varieties, many of which look to the botanist exactly the same, but which the native almost at sight distinguishes, saying that the one will suit one kind, the other another kind, of soil, or that he can eat the one, but does not like the other. The native understands his own varieties, his own ways of cultivation, his own taste, to a nicety, and resents any interference, in so far as he is not contemptuous Ill (a). High Lands and Paddy Fields III (b). Winnowing Paddy CH. I] RICE AND OTHER CEREALS AND FOOD PLANTS 47 about it ; while one not knowing the niceties of flavour, etc., is liable to great mistakes. The Tamil coolies of Ceylon, who come from the southern parts of Madras, live on the imported parboiled Indian rice, refusing to touch the Sinhalese rice, which they say gives them indigestion ; while the Sinhalese say that there is no nourishment in the Indian rice. Analysis shows, we may mention, that rice contains about 7*3 °/0 of / albuminoids and 78*3 °/0 of starch, and is thus hardly so good / a food as wheat. It is at present idle to imagine the natives of eastern countries going in for machinery and modern methods, such as are so successful in the United States, and for the improvement of rice cultivation we must look to other and minor things. But, as has been elsewhere indicated, we must be very sure of our ground before we recommend any measure to the native for adoption. To take an illustrative case from Ceylon — a planter living near Peradeniya suggested to the villagers that they should manure their fields, and offered, as they could not afford to buy the manure, to give it to them. This was accepted, the manure was applied, the plants grew splendidly, about half as tall again as usual, the planter was delighted. But when harvest time came, the village headmen came and offered to give him all the crop, if the villagers might be allowed to keep the straw. On examination, it turned out that the " paddy-fly " had eaten out the contents of all the grains. Whether this was merely a coincidence, or whether it was that the extra vigorous growth of the shoots had made the grains more tender, is uncertain, but the result of the experiment was a disastrous failure, and the villagers there have acquired a prejudice against manuring which may last a century or more. And yet there is no doubt that a carefully thought out scientific system of manuring, combined if necessary with improved precautions against the paddy-fly, would improve the crop. But the important point is that all such proposals should receive the most careful and exhaustive trials before being recommended to the villagers. To indicate briefly some of the directions in which it would seem possible that improvement may be effected : paddies of different durations of ripening from those already employed 48 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II might be tried in the villages, for instance "three-month" paddies in districts at present only using " four-month " : paddies of similar duration, but of better quality, should be tried: experiments should be carefully tried with improved tools, especially ploughs : transplanting should be introduced in place of broadcasting, in districts where it is not now practised : harvesting might be improved by the use of the scythe in place of the sickle : threshing by the use of the flail : the use of water might be more economical. Another way, again, in which it is likely that great im- provement might be introduced in most countries, is in the practice of rotation of crops. During the period in which the fields lie idle, they should be planted with other crops. This is at present only done systematically in Java and India, where the fields are planted with sweet potatoes, jute, pulses, etc. It would seem likely that if the same crop were not always used, and if a leguminous crop were occasionally introduced into the series, a better effect might be produced. For example, let the course of the crops be rice, sweet potato, rice, peas or beans or other leguminous crop. There are many other ways in which small improvements might be introduced into rice growing, without giving too great a shock to the prejudices of the villagers, but improvement must be very gradual and cautious, and every step must first be carefully tested. Dry Grains. This term, used in Ceylon to describe those cereals which are not grown with the aid of irrigation, is a convenient generic term to use for these plants, of which there are many, grown over very large areas in India and elsewhere. The term Millets might almost as well be used, the bulk of these grains being millets, but would not cover quite all of them. Next only to wheat, maize, and rice, these are the most important food grains, and it is probable that about a quarter of the population of the world lives upon them, though they are more unfamiliar in Europe than rice. India is more especially the land of dry grain cultivation. In the drier districts, which make up a large part of India, it CH. l] RICE AND OTHER CEREALS AND FOOD PLANTS 49 replaces rice. The fields are usually tilled with the plough and harrow, the latter having frequently such large teeth and being so heavily loaded that it is practically a cultivator, and the seed is sown with a drill, or broadcasted. Most of these grains ripen in a few months, and are then usually harvested with the sickle, and threshed with bullocks, as described under rice. The straw is often valuable as fodder, and many varieties are grown expressly for fodder purposes. Among the more important of these grains are (1) the Great Millet or Guinea Corn (Sorghum vulgare), variously known in different parts of India as juar, jowar, jowari, cholam: it occurs in a vast number of varieties ; (2) the Bulrush Millet (Pennisetum typhoideum), or bajri, or kumbu ; (3) the Maize or Indian Corn (Zea Mays) ; (4) Eleusine coracana, the Ragi or Kurakkan; (5) the Italian Millet (Setaria italica) or kangni; (6) the Kodo Millet (Paspalum scrobictdatum) whose grain is at times liable to be poisonous (it is supposed from the development of a fungus in it); (7) the other millets (Panicum species). Guinea corn is grown on 8,000,000 acres in Bombay, and 4,000,000 in Madras, as well as elsewhere in India. The soil is generally manured by cattle-penning and in other ways, and the seed most commonly broadcasted. The grain contains more albuminoids and less starch than rice, and is a good food, while the plant makes a good fodder and is much used for this purpose. Guinea corn is largely exported, especially from Bombay to Aden, Arabia, Abyssinia, etc. Bulrush millet is especially grown in Bombay, and covers 8,000,000 acres in tropical India. It is a summer crop and reaped about September. The analysis is like that of Guinea corn. Maize, or Indian corn, a native of America, introduced to the East by the Portuguese, is cultivated all over India and Ceylon, but only on the large scale in the northern non-tropical parts. It shows a great range of varieties, apparently depend- ing to a large extent upon climate. New varieties introduced anywhere tend to go to the local form by crossing, and disappoint- ment has consequently attended efforts to improve the Indian w. 4 50 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II forms by acclimatisation of good American kinds. In tropical America this grain is very largely cultivated in different varie- ties from sea-level to 7000 feet and even higher, yields two crops a year, and a large return per acre. Cakes and bread are made of the bruised or ground corn, the green cobs are eaten, spirit is prepared from the corn, the young plants are used for fodder, etc. It makes in fact one of the great staples of the food of the population. A careful study of the capabilities of the different varieties, and of their suitability to different districts, would well repay itself, for there are very large areas suited to this crop, and there should be a large export, as well as production for local use. Ragi is grown in Madras on 1,500,000 acres, in Bombay on 800;000. Though a poor food, the straw is good fodder. In the East these grains are very popular as chena crops ; in the West Indies they are grown as a minor food crop, but rarely in large areas. In Africa they are also common and might perhaps with advantage be more largely grown in South America, etc. The dry grains being so important a part of the food supply of the world, it is obvious that attention should be especially devoted to them, with a view to making the cultivation more efficient and remunerative. It is, however, difficult to do much in this way, in dealing with the very poor people who mainly cultivate these grains The different varieties should be carefully tested against one another in different districts, and a careful study should also be made of the possible rotations or mixtures of crops. In most of India these grains are as a matter of fact even now sown mixed with pulses, etc. Other Pood Crops. There are many other plants grown in the tropics for food, and it would lead too far to go into details with regard to them, but a brief account of the more important of them will be given. Yams. Strictly speaking the name applies only to the tubers of species of Dioscorea, but it is often applied to all CH. I] RICE AND OTHER CEREALS AND FOOD PLANTS 51 tubers, even potatoes being known as yams in Ceylon. The four best of the many Dioscoreas used are usually supposed to be the white yam (D. alata), the negro yam (D. sativa), the Guinea yam (D. aculeata), and the cush-cush yam (D. triphylld), but there are very many others eatable out of the 150 species of which the genus is composed. Most of them, and all the best, have underground tubers like potatoes, but of very variable size, from a few ounces in some kinds up to 40 Ibs. weight in others. Yams are propagated like potatoes from pieces of the tubers, and are planted in rows, with sticks to climb upon. The tubers are ripe in eight to twelve months, and are usually dug up and put by to keep. The yam is used as a vegetable like the potato, and cooked in various ways. Properly cooked, a good yam is an excellent vegetable, though English people seldom enjoy it. Cassava, Manioca, or Tapioca (Manihot utilissima) is one of the great food plants of the tropics, besides being consumed in colder climates. It is a native of South America, and was very early introduced into Asia, where it is extensively grown in the Malayan countries, Ceylon, etc. It is also very largely cultivated in the West Indies and throughout the warmer parts of South America. It is a shrubby plant, usually about eight feet high, and produces enormous tubers upon the roots. These are full of starch, and it is for them that the plant is cultivated. There are two varieties in cultivation, the sweet and the bitter. The latter gives the best return, and is the more popular, but its tubers contain prussic acid, and are dangerously poisonous until the acid has been dissipated by boiling or heating. The plants are set out as cuttings, and the roots may be gathered at about eight to twelve months old. The tubers are carefully dug up, and are usually washed, peeled, and grated small, while the resulting pulp is hung in a compressible bag, with weights upon it, so as to squeeze out the poisonous juice. The meal is then baked or otherwise cooked. In some countries the tubers are eaten like yams. 4—2 52 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II The poisonous juice is often boiled down in the West Indies, until it forms a treacley compound, which is highly antiseptic and is known as cassareep. It may be used for preserving meat, and is an ingredient in many sauces. The tapioca of commerce (mostly exported from Singapore) is the starch of the tubers, heated so as to burst the grains. Sweet Potato (Ipomoea Batatas). This is another very common vegetable in the tropics, as in the United States, and is one of the best of culinary vegetables. It occurs in very numerous varieties, and is specially popular as a rotation crop in rice fields. • It is a small climber, not unlike a true yam in habit, and is cultivated in the same way, and the tuberous roots eaten. Arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea). Though the best arrow- root of European commerce comes from Bermuda, the plant is usually a tropical cultivation. The tuberous root-stocks are full of starch, and the plant is cultivated like Cassava. Sago. The sago palm (Metroxylon Rumphii- and other species) is an important cultivation in the Malayan region. It is a short palm, which only flowers once, as do so many palms, after a long period during which it is saving up food material with which to do so. Just before the flowering stalk arises, the stems are cut, and their pith, which is very rich in starch, scraped out and washed. Aroids. A good many members of the family Araceae or Aroideae are also used as food, especially in the strictly equa- torial regions. Perhaps the most important are the taro (Colocasia esculenta) of the East Indies, and the tanier (Xanthosoma spp.) of the West Indies. Food for Animals. The cultivation of fodder plants is hardly yet a definite industry in the tropics except in India, where considerable areas are cultivated in Guinea corn, millets, and other plants for fodders. But many of the cereals cul- tivated, and especially the dry grains, furnish good fodder. Large areas of Cuba and of other countries are now under Guinea grass and other fodder grasses. An important minor industry in Ceylon and other places is the cultivation of CH. I] RICE AND OTHER CEREALS AND FOOD PLANTS 53 Guinea and Mauritius grasses for sale to the proprietors of horses and cattle in the towns. In southern Brazil there is quite a large cattle industry (including dairying) upon the drier country of the plateau (p. 10), where the beasts feed chiefly upon the natural grass. Pigs are also raised in large numbers. In the more equatorial countries, one of the great wants is that of proper grazing land ; the cattle get a little grazing on the dry paddy fields after the crop is cut, and are usually turned out more or less untended to graze where they can, but real pasture land is almost unknown. In India they are usually grazed in the fields, or among the trees upon crown forest lands, under charge of small boys. But a very real want in all the more equatorial countries is pasture land, and much improve- ment of cattle cannot be taken in hand unless the question of proper feeding is at the same time solved. CHAPTER II SUGAR Cane Sugar. This is the classic tropical cultivation, so extensively engaged in in the West Indies in the days of slavery, and is still one of the largest industries in the tropics, in spite of the competition of European and American beet sugar. It is most extensively pursued in Java, the Sandwich Islands, Brazil, Guiana, the Malay Peninsula, Cuba, and in the British West Indies, while in India there are about 2,850,000 acres devoted to cane, though all but about 200,000 acres are in the northern non-tropical parts. In the early days of the European occupation of the West Indies, this cultivation was practically the only one engaged in, and owing to the great profits made in it, thanks to absence of competition, slave labour, and other things, it gradually took up a great part of the country, including large areas of soils which were in reality unsuited to it. The first blow to this prosperity was of course the abolition of slavery. The second was the competition of beet sugar grown in Europe, the yield of sugar from the beet being continually improved by scientific selection. The third was the continuance of the West Indian planters in the old ways, suitable enough for the past generation, but out of keeping with modern progress. They continued to grow sugar in small areas and to have a factory for each small estate. With all these factors against it, cane cultivation in the British West Indies has in recent years sunk to a very low level of prosperity. From a modern point of view, the third disadvantage named above is probably the most important. In Cuba, Java, Hawaii, and elsewhere, sugar is cultivated on a very large scale, and enormous factories are CH. II] SUGAR 55 erected, which of course can contain the very latest and best machinery. Such estates continue to show a good profit, though the small West Indian concerns do not. There is probably no industry in the tropics in which specialisation has gone so far, and in which consequently large estates, and giant factories, are so much required. The small maker of sugar can only survive by being specially bolstered up, but the small cultivator is of course all right, for he can devote his attention to growing the cane in the best way, and sell it to the large factory near by, as in fact is done on a fairly large scale in Java, the Malay Peninsula, and elsewhere. What the writer saw in Cuba may very well illustrate the general tendency in sugar cultivation. An American merchant many years ago had a small sugar estate left to him in payment of a debt. At first intending to sell it and be done with it, he, on second thoughts, went down to look at it, and soon decided that the expenditure of a little capital would perhaps give it a chance. This was done, the estate paid its way ; presently one of the owner's Cuban neighbours was so hardly pinched by bad trade that he sold his estate to the American, who closed the factory upon it, dealt with the cane at his own now enlarged factory, and put the former owner, a careful man, upon the place as cane-growing superintendent. This process went on, and one by one the surrounding estates were sold to the grow- ing American business, till now, after thirty years, its rich proprietor owns about 15,000 acres of sugar-cane, and runs a colossal factory dealing with the whole produce of this area. I was informed that the same process was going on in four or five districts of Cuba, and that the whole sugar industry of the island was falling into the hands of a few wealthy Americans or American companies. In some of the British West Indies, e.g. in Montserrat, sugar has come to be a peasant cultivation, the landowner providing the land and the sugar works, the peasant cultivating and manufacturing the sugar, each party then taking one-half of the net proceeds. Sugar is thus very cheaply pro- duced, for the peasant does not set much value on his time, and the landowner spends little, but the land tends to become steadily impoverished. 56 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II In India, on the other hand, the problem is quite different. The cheapening of sugar by the competition of beet-sugar, and other causes, have enormously increased the local consumption, though they have thrown India out of the export trade ; in fact, it now imports enormous quantities (about 260,000 tons a year) from Java, and the amount is increasing year by year — though India ought to be able to supply herself. The local demand is mainly for the coarse unrefined gur or jaggery, which can be produced more cheaply than any imported sugar. The cane, which is grown in small areas, and often in rotation with wheat, rice, pulses, and other crops, is crushed between wooden rollers and the juice boiled down till it will condense on standing. Sugar (Saccharum officinarum) grows best on rich porous clays and on alluvial soils at sea level, and does not mind the near neighbourhood of the sea. It will not succeed in the hills. It sets no seeds as a rule, and is propagated by cuttings, which are nowadays usually planted about five or six feet apart. In from 12 to 14 months (in the West Indies) the shoots from these cuttings are ripe for harvesting, when they form bunches of waving stems, about 6 — 12 feet in height, and looking not unlike gigantic grasses, as indeed they are. They are cut close to the ground with cutlasses, and brought into the factory. Owing to their enormous weight the problem of carriage assumes great importance in sugar cultivation. On large estates in the West Indies and elsewhere, they are gener- ally brought in by light railroads or tramways laid down in the fields, sometimes worked by horses, sometimes by locomotives. In the Malay Peninsula, on the other hand, the land lies very low, and small canals have been made throughout it, upon which the cane can be hauled in barges, at a great saving in cost. This, I was informed by the manager of the largest com- pany engaged in sugar cultivation there, gives the estates a very measurable advantage over those of the West Indies, in which he was for several years engaged in the cultivation of sugar. In British Guiana, it is stated that 30 tons of cane per acre are regarded as a good crop, and yield 25 tons of juice, but this evaporates to about 36 cwt. of sugar. Even so, it is evident CH. II] SUGAR 57 that the crop must be a very exhausting one, and indeed rota- tion of crops is commonly practised with sugar. In many countries the canes are not replanted after every crop, but the stumps, or rattoons, as they are called, are allowed to grow up again for two or more years. Once in the factory the sugar cane goes through a variety of processes. It is first passed through large and heavy rollers, which crush out the juice. As a rule it goes successively through two or three sets of such rollers. The refuse cane, known as megass, is commonly used as fuel for the engines in the factory, and is carried to them by elevators. The juice is next clarified by being mixed with unslaked lime, and heating, when the acids are neutralised, and the twigs and other debris contained in the juice rise to the top and are skimmed off. It is then concentrated by heating in several successive boilers, usually under lower and lower pressure, and finally the thick pasty mass is poured out to stiffen into sugar and then arranged in such a way as to allow the uncrystallisable "molasses" to drain off. It would lead beyond the scope of this work to describe the processes in detail. The work requires, and in every modern factory receives, the attention of a skilled chemist — one reason among many why the small factory cannot hope to succeed against the big one. Some of the sugar factories in Cuba, Hawaii, and the Malayan region are upon a colossal scale, the machinery in them representing large capital expenditure. Big machinery crushes, boils, crystallises, and does the other work of the factory much more economically than small, and obtains a greater percentage of sugar from a given kind of cane. Until comparatively recently, even in the most advanced countries, the cultivation of the cane was more or less casual, attention being rather devoted to the improvement of the machinery to deal with it; and it remains in this condition in India and elsewhere. Now, however, stimulated by the example of beet-sugar, in which wonderful improvements have been introduced by careful selection of the tubers, and in other ways, careful and well-organised attempts are being made in Java, the West Indies, and elsewhere, to improve the yield of 58 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II the cane. Already several new varieties have been created, which bid fair to give much better returns. It has also been found that the cane occasionally bears fertile flowers, and attempts have been made to gain the benefits due to cross- fertilisation. Some of these crosses also promise well. The general indications point to sugar remaining a very important industry in Java, Cuba, and other of the more advanced countries, but to its more or less dying out, or becom- ing a peasant cultivation, in the smaller West Indian Islands. One of the most obvious improvements, in such countries as India, is separation of the manufacture from the growth, and specialisation of the former into very large factories, with trained chemical assistance. Trial of new and improved canes may be recommended, and the production of improved forms. Careful study of rotation of crops upon sugar land is also required, for sugar is a very exhausting crop, and requires to be alternated with other things. Green manuring between the rows of sugar might also be of advantage. In India a special problem is presented, to grow sugar adapted to local needs, and this the more as foreign and cleaner sugar seems to be becoming annually more popular there. Other Sources of Sugar. Many of the palms have the habit of flowering only at the end of their life, either in one large mass of flowers, or in several consecutive ones. From such palms, and from the Coconut and Palmyra and other palms which do not do this, sugar is obtained in many tropical coun- tries, by tapping the flower stalk, collecting, and evaporating, the juice. A coarse brown sugar named jaggery is thus obtained, and it is in general a sweet and good sugar, exten- sively used in tropical lands. Careful comparative investigations, and perhaps selection of seed, are badly wanted in reference to- this industry, which is very important locally in the tropics, no less than 480,000 tons of sugar being made annually in India from palms. CHAPTER III TEAS Tea. The tea plant (Thea sinensis) is originally a native of south-west China, Assam, and Manipur, occurring in several varieties, of which the true " China " with rather small, and the "Assam" with rather large, leaves are the best marked. It has been largely cultivated in China and Japan for a very long time, and has always formed a staple of the consumption of those countries. From about the middle of the eighteenth century it came largely into use in Europe, but the supply was for a very long period entirely or almost entirely from China, and the great tea merchants were mostly in Foochow and Canton. About 1835, through the efforts of the Botanic Gardens in Calcutta, the cultivation was introduced into Assam, and from almost the very start it has proved successful there, until now Assam is a very large producing country. It was not tried commercially in Ceylon until considerably later, when the collapse of coffee rendered it obligatory to find something else to grow instead of it, but about 1875 the first tea was exported from Ceylon, and proved to be profitable. During the early eighties there was a tremendous rush into tea in the island, and by 1896, when the rush began to fall off rapidly, the area planted in tea was no less than 380,000 acres, and it has remained at that figure since, with trifling change. At a later period it was introduced into Java, and that country now has some 210,000 acres in tea cultivation. It has also been introduced into the West Indian islands, and into other countries, but in none of them is labour sufficiently cheap to render cultivation .profitable. Tea was grown commercially in Brazil, on a small scale, from 1814 to 1837. 60 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II With the enormous growth of the industry in India and Ceylon, which now have between them about 1,000,000 acres in tea, the export of tea from China has gradually fallen off, and the merchants have left Foochow for Calcutta and Colombo. Thus, the figures of consumption in England for a few different* years may be quoted, as clearly illustrating this statement : China India Ceylon 1849 50,021,576 Ibs. 1859 76,303,661 1869 101,080,491 10,716,000 Ibs. 1879 126,340,000 34,092,000 1889 61,100,000 96,028,491 28,500,000 Ibs. 1899 24,000,000 134,000,000 85,137,945 In 1910-11, Ceylon exported 183,905,153 Ibs. of tea, of which 108,356,360 went to the United Kingdom. The rise of the tea industry of Ceylon affords one of the most remarkable instances of rapid development of an agri- cultural pursuit, especially when the previous history of the planting industry in the island is remembered. In 1875 there were barely 1000 acres planted with tea. During the next ten years of depression, due to the failure of coffee, this acreage increased to 102,000, by 1889 it attained 205,000, by 1893, 305,000, and it is now about 405,000. A good deal of inter- planting of rubber in the tea has gone on in the lower districts, but this has been compensated by new planting in the higher. The island imported its tea in the early days of tea planting, but in 1883 the export exceeded 1,600,000 Ibs., in 1887 it was 13,813,872 Ibs., in 1896, 108,141,412 Ibs., and in 1910-11 no less (including green tea) than 183,905,153 Ibs. For the present, at any rate, the growth of the industry seems to have practically reached its upper limit (1920, 184,846,683 Ibs.). Tea is now the chief industry in the mountain districts of Ceylon, the Nilgiri Mountains of South India, the great valleys of Assam, the hills at Darjiling, and elsewhere in India, to say nothing of the increasing industry in Java. In Ceylon, above the elevation of 2500 feet, it forms almost the only cultivation, and affords one of the most striking instances in the world of a large stretch of country covered with one crop. CH. Ill] TEAS 61 Several varieties of the tea plant are known ; the China variety is but little cultivated except in China, and the usual ones cultivated on estates are the "Assam Indigenous," and the " Hybrid," a cross between this and the China. Both of these have larger leaves than the China variety, and yield more crop. The tea plant, a small tree when left to itself, is cultivated on estates in large fields, in which the plants are placed about four feet apart, and severely pruned at intervals of eighteen months to four }7ears according to the elevation (low or high) of the estate above the sea, down to a height of l£ feet. They thus form squat bushes about three feet high, and with flat spreading tops, so that it is easy for the coolies to get at the young shoots that are constantly appearing on the tops of the bushes. These shoots, taken together, are termed the " flush," and the object of cultivation and pruning is to ensure large, frequent and regular flushing. In the colder climates of China and Assam flushing ceases in winter, but in Ceylon or Java it goes on all the year round. Tea manufacture consists essentially in the plucking of the young shoots of the flush and their subsequent treatment by " withering," " rolling," " fermenting," and " drying " or " firing," to form tea. In Ceylon the flush is plucked every eight to twelve days by women and children working in gangs under overseers. They soon become remarkably quick and expert at the work. Plucking is designated as " fine " when the bud at the tip of the young shoot and the two young leaves just below it are taken, "medium" when the bud and three, "coarse" when the bud and four leaves are taken. The coarser the plucking the poorer the average quality of the tea produced, though the greater the quantity. Fine plucking produces the various teas known as pekoes, while the older leaves give souchongs and congous. Pekoes consisting only of the buds or tips are known as "flowery," those containing also the first young leaf as "orange" pekoes. The coolies bring in their leaf plucked to the factory, usually a large well-equipped building, containing the most modern machinery, and worked by water or steam power. The " leaf" is examined and weighed, and the amount plucked by 62 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [FT. II each coolie recorded, the wages depending partly on the amount plucked. After the leaf has been weighed it is taken to the upper floor of the factory and thinly spread out on light openwork shelves of canvas known as tats, to wither. In good weather it becomes limp and flaccid in about 18 hours, but in wet weather artificial heat is employed and a current of warm dry air drawn through the withering loft. The properly withered leaf is next thrown down through shoots into the rollers or rolling machines on the ground floor. A roller consists essen- tially of a table with a central depression to hold the leaf, and a hopper above it, the two moving over one another with an eccentric motion. Pressure to any required extent can be put upon the mass of leaf that is being rolled, and at the end of an hour or so the door in the bottom of the table is opened, and the " roll " falls out, the leaves all twisted and clinging together in masses, which are then broken up in a machine called a roll- breaker, to which is usually attached a sifter that separates the coarser leaf from the finer. After this the leaf is piled in drawers or on mats to ferment or oxidise, with free access of air. This process is omitted in the manufacture of green tea. In a couple of hours or so, depending upon the weather, the leaf assumes a coppery colour, and gives out a peculiar smell. Ex- perience is required to determine the exact point at which to stop the fermentation and place it in the firing or drying machines. There are many types of these machines, but all act by passing a current of hot dry air through the damp fermented leaf till it is dry and brittle, when it is removed and sorted into grades by a machine composed of a series of moving sieves of different sizes of mesh. Finally it is bulked (i.e. the whole mass of each grade made on one or more days is thoroughly mixed together, so as to secure as great uniformity of quality as is possible), packed in lead-lined boxes of about 100 Ibs., soldered up, labelled with the name of the estate, and despatched to the port for shipment. The grades of tea usually prepared in Ceylon and India are known (in order of quality and value) as orange pekoe, pekoe, pekoe-souchong, souchong, congou, and dust. faJO c 1 OH CH. Ill] TEAS 63 Green tea, made in the same general way as black, but withered by means of steaming, and prepared without ferment- ation, is graded as young hyson, hyson No. 1, hyson No. 2, gunpowder, and dust. Green teas are mainly made for the American market, where the common black teas made for the English and Australian markets are not popular. Until about 1900 the price of tea fell fairly steadily, and cheapening of production did not keep pace with it, so that the profit also fell off. That it has not continued to fall must be attributed to two causes, the cessation of extension of the culti- vation, and the increased consumption in markets outside of the United Kingdom, such as Australia, Russia, America. This has largely been the work of the export cess formerly levied by the Ceylon Government at the request of the planters, and applied to advertising Ceylon tea in new markets. This cess was 30 cents of a rupee (or 5d.) per cwt. of tea exported, too small an amount to be noticeable, but making a very handsome total upon the whole export. The whole history of the tea industry is thus a con- spicuous instance of the success of good methods and modern machinery against primitive hand methods, such as are still •employed in China, a country which, though possessing the cheapest labour in the world, has been quite unable to hold its own against the competition of India and Ceylon. Somewhat the same story has been enacted in the cases of cinchona, •coffee, and cardamoms, and is now about to be enacted in the case of rubber. The general tendency in the case of tea would seem to be towards the further cheapening of production by grouping together of estates and opening of very large factories, towards the further opening up of important foreign markets, such as America and Russia, perhaps by the manufacture of oolongs and other special kinds of teas to suit their tastes, and towards the abandonment of areas which have proved, now that the great rush is over, quite unsuitable for the cultivation of tea. Agri- culture in the tropics has in the past been conducted too much at hazard, and the suitability of the soils and climabes to the production of particular crops has been too much 64 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II neglected, but in the future this will have to be more carefully regarded. Other directions in which improvement is to be looked for are in the general application of green manuring, in the more scientific use of bulk manures for flavour, in the selection of the best seeds for propagation, and in the manufacture. Mate or Paraguay Tea. This plant (Ilex paraguayensis} furnishes one of the staple drinks of South America: it contains a considerable proportion of caffein, the alkaloid to which coffee owes its stimulating properties. Many attempts have been made to introduce this drink in northern countries, but the mistake has been made of trying to introduce it as mate, and no success has been attained, as was the case with kola. What should be done is to mix it in small proportion with tea or coffee, calling the mixture by some fancy name including tea or coffee in the title, and as the taste for the mixture grows increase the proportion of mate. The consumption in South America, where the plant is native in southern Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, is enormous. Brazil exports about 190,000,000 Ibs. a year, besides consuming a good deal locally; and Paraguay also a very large amount, most of it going to Argentina. The plant is but rarely cultivated, but occurs wild in great abundance. The young branches are cut, and dried over a fire of aromatic wood, until the leaves are crisp, when they are broken off and packed to go to the grinding mill, where they are ground into a fine powder in a large iron pan, and packed for market. VII (a). Withering Tea VII (b). Rolling Tea CHAPTER IV COFFEE, CACAO OR CHOCOLATE, KOLA, ETC. Coffee. This plant is now mainly cultivated in Brazil and the rest of tropical America, which give more than half the supply, Java, and South India, but thirty or forty years ago was the mainstay of export agriculture in Ceylon, in which island there were about 300,000 acres devoted to it. Its history in Ceylon is of some interest. Next to the old sugar cultivation of the West Indies, coffee cultivation was the first industry in the tropics that was found worth attention by Europeans (other than Governments) — the first, if slave labour be left out of account. It was first taken up in Ceylon in the early thirties. From then till about 1845 there was a tremendous " boom " in it, and it was engaged in by numerous persons who had no knowledge whatever of tropical cultivation, with the inevitable collapse, as described in more detail in another place. Then came a period of resuscitation and renewed prosperity under more skilled superintendence, lasting till about 1870, when the first signs of the insidious leaf-disease, Hemileia vastatrix, a parasitic fungus feeding upon the leaves of the coffee bush, began to appear. Numerous remedies were suggested and tried, but all without avail, and the disease spread and spread over the great sheet of coffee cultivation in the mountains, and was closely followed by a bad attack of " green bug," until in the eighties the cultivation was practically entirely ruined, and the numerous European planters reduced almost to beggary. It is doubtful if the world can produce a more striking instance of the complete destruction of an industry by the attacks of disease, though it is certain that if tea had not then come in, and proved very profitable, coffee would not have died out so completely as has been the case. w. 5 66 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II At the present time, though rubber may eventually surpass it, coffee is the greatest exportation industry of the tropics. Brazil alone exported in 1920 a value of £52,500,000, the produce of an area of 3,300,000 acres, chiefly in the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Geraes, where perhaps 1,000,000 men, chiefly Italian and Portuguese, are employed upon the coffee plantations. Other countries of South and Central America, notably Venezuela and Guatemala, also export large quantities of coffee, while India, Java, and other countries of the Old World occupy much lower places, although their production has of late been increasing. Although Brazil at present supplies the greater part of the coffee consumed, the finest qualities come from the higher mountain districts of Java, Jamaica, Mexico, Arabia, etc. The total area cultivated in coffee is about 5,000,000 acres. The chief species of coffee cultivated is the Arabian (Coffea arabica), which gives the finest quality of coffee. Coffea robusta, an African species, has of late years come prominently to the front as a producer of good coffee at elevations lower than those at which Arabian succeeds, and as it possesses the marked advantage of producing a noticeable crop at two years old, it has come into great favour in Java, Sumatra, and elsewhere. Liberian coffee (G. liberica) is also a good deal cultivated in countries with low-lying, humid areas, like the Federated Malay States and other flat countries. There are many other species of coffee known, and some of them are proving useful in hybridisation, which gives promise of producing valuable results. Coffee grows in very different climates and soils, but in general the climate should allow of dry weather for the ripening of the crop, and the soil should be deep and water-retaining. In Brazil suitable soils are to a large extent picked out by observing whether certain trees, 'such as Apeiba Tibourbou, are to be found growing well upon them. The best coffee soils in the state of Sao Paulo have a depth sometimes exceeding 20 yards. The rainfalls of coffee countries vary from 30 to 150 inches. Frost is dangerous, especially if accompanied by wind. CH. IV] COFFEE, CACAO OR CHOCOLATE, KOLA, ETC. 67 The bushes are usually placed about 10 feet apart in Java, and more in Brazil. In many countries, but not in Brazil, they are shaded by growing among them other trees, generally species of Erythrina, under which the leaf-disease, unknown in Brazil,- is less troublesome. In Brazil they are merely lightly shaded during the first two years of growth. In many countries the tops of the bushes (other than Liberian) are pruned off in order to give them a spreading habit and render it easier to pick the fruit, but in Brazil they are allowed to grow to a height of 15 feet or more. In the same way, in Java, etc., they are very carefully pruned as they grow up, the primary branches being left, but the secondaries removed for the first six inches from the stem, and beyond that one at each node, on each side in turn, so that if at one node the branch project north, at the next it will project south. Coffee comes into bearing at 2 — 5 years old, Coffea-robusta bearing sooner than G. arabica, and the countries of tropical Asia bearing sooner than Brazil, where however the bushes keep longer in good condition. In climates with a marked dry season, the bushes usually flower simultaneously, and the large snowy flowers present a very beautiful sight. The fruits are red berries ripening some time afterwards, and must be picked soon after they are ripe, or even, to obtain the best results, each one as it becomes ripe. The average yield of dried seeds in Brazil is at the rate of | Ib. (on old soil near Rio de Janeiro) to 15 Ib. (on virgin soil in the finest districts of Sao Paulo) per bush. But it is better to take the average yield per acre, and this in Brazil upon good, new, land reaches as high as 2900 Ib. About half that amount was the average in Ceylon in the old coffee days, and in general tropical Asia gives rather smaller yields as compared to southern Brazil. The crop varies considerably from one year to another. A " bumper " crop, which is usually obtained once in every seven years or thereabouts, generally damages the plants, and is succeeded by poor crops for some years. The collection of coffee in tropical Asia is generally by careful picking of the individual berries, which are thus obtained in the best condition and without intermixture of leaves and 5—2 68 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II other debris, but in Brazil, where labour is more costly, they are generally stripped from the branches by drawing the hand along, and fall upon the ground below, from which they are collected, a cloth being sometimes laid down for them to fall upon, and the intermingled debris is subsequently removed. The fruit, or " cherry " as it is termed by coffee planters, is a fleshy fruit containing two seeds placed face to face in a common envelope of somewhat horny consistency, which is termed the "parchment." The cherries are in some cases simply dried in the sun like cacao seeds, being piled together again at nights and spread out in the morning until fully dried, but in more careful preparation they are treated by what is often called the wet method. The ripe fruits are first washed through a "pulper," a machine with a barrel, covered with teeth like that of a musical box, or with semi-circular projections, revolving against a fixed beam. This crushes the pulp on the fruits, and they pass through into a stream of water, where it is washed away. The pairs of seeds are then placed in a vessel to ferment for a couple of days, the remains of the pulp are easily washed off, and they are dried. The dried fruits then form what is termed "parchment," the two seeds being enclosed face to face in a parchment-like covering. In this condition they may be kept a long time, but they are generally put through what is called a "huller," in which a revolving heavy wheel breaks up the parchment layer, and sets free the seeds, which are freed from the broken parchment by winnowing. They are then bagged and sent to Europe. Five pounds of the fresh fruit finally give about one of dry coffee. A few years ago, in a year of " bumper " crop, Brazil, which then had a greater monopoly of the market than she now has, took the bold step of "valorising" coffee, i.e. the Government took off the market the excess of production, and has sold it in later years of smaller yield. But this of course only postponed the evil day of over-production, which is bound to arrive when the next Brazilian bumper crop comes, while Java and other countries have vastly extended their area under coffee. The chances of improvement in coffee cultivation seem to CH. IV] COFFEE, CACAO OR CHOCOLATE, KOLA, ETC. 69 lie to a large extent in scientific treatment. Careful study of the different hybrids is required, and also of the methods of grafting one kind of coffee on another, or possibly even on other members of the same natural family. The successful acclima- tisation of Liberian coffee in Java at high levels, even to 3000 feet, by taking the seed up a few hundred feet at each generation, also indicates a line which may be useful in hybridisation. Careful selection of seed of the best bearers both as to quality and as to quantity is also urgently needed, and it is possible that even selection of the quickest bearers might prove of advantage, by producing a breed that would yield a crop earlier than those at present cultivated. Green manuring, agtiin, would probably prove of use. Cacao, Cocoa, or Chocolate. The cacao tree, Theobroma Cacao, is probably a native of Venezuela and northern South America, and is still largely in cultivation there, but is now probably almost the most widely cultivated of those tropical products in which there is an export trade. The following figures give the export from different countries for the year 1919: Gold Coast 176,000 tons Ecuador 40,000 tons Other British San Domingo 22,000 Colonies 70,000 Venezuela 15,000 Brazil 62,500 Elsewhere 27,000 St Thomas 46,500 Total 460,500 tons These are large figures, but, allowing 7 or 8 acres to produce a ton, it will be seen that they do not represent very large areas. The most remarkable feature in this table is the rapid rise to first place of the Gold Coast, which in 1904 was eighth, and now produces about 38 °/0 of the supply. The general principles of the cultivation of cacao are much the same in all countries, and therefore the methods followed in Ceylon, whose cacao in general obtains the highest prices, may be described here, with notes on the important points of differ- ence in other countries. 70 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II Cacao is a small tree or large shrub, from 12 to 25 feet in height, and much branched. It has large leaves, which when young are reddish in colour, and hang downwards. It flowers in vast profusion, not on the twigs, as one would expect, but upon very short branches produced on the old and stout stems. The flowers are succeeded by a considerable number of oval reddish, greenish, or yellowish fruits, about 6 to 11 inches long, with rather fleshy outer walls, and containing about 30 bean- like seeds, each enclosed in a mucilaginous outer coat. There are numerous varieties of cacao in existence, but these may in general be classed under two main types, conveniently known by their Spanish names of Criollo and Forastero1. The former are characterised by plump pale-coloured seeds of fine quality, making up a large bulk in comparison with the external size of the pod, the shell being relatively thin. The tree itself is usually small and somewhat delicate. On account of the pale colour, these seeds are specially valued in Europe and America for the manufacture of eating chocolate, and consider- ably higher prices are paid for them than for the Forastero. The very high prices obtained for many years by the Ceylon cacao were due mainly to its being the seed of this variety, and now that it has been very largely replaced by Forastero, the average prices of Ceylon cacao have gone down. The term Forastero includes all the varieties other than the Criollos. The chief ones, in descending order of merit, are Cundeamor, Liso or Trinitario, Amelonado, and Calabacillo. The seeds of these varieties are more or less purple in colour, and the shell of the fruit is thicker and harder. In consequence of the purple colour, the seeds sell for lower prices, but this is to some extent made up by the better and hardier growth. Other species of cacao, e.g. Theobroma pentagona, are also occasionally used as cacao producers. The cacao plant must be cultivated, generally speaking, under a certain amount of shade, more especially to protect it from wind, which produces disastrous results. The favourite 1 Lock, B. H., On the varieties of Cacao existing in the Eoyal Botanic Gardens and Experimental Station at Peradeniya, Circ. & A. J., E. B. G-., Peradeniya, n, 24 Oct. 1904, p. 385. IX. Criollo Cacao, in fruit (Original in possession of the Kolonial Wirthschaftliche Komitee, Berlin) CH. IV] COFFEE, CACAO OR CHOCOLATE, KOLA, ETC. 71 shade trees have hitherto been species of Erythrina, known in the West Indies as Madre del Cacao, or Bois Immortelle, in the East as dadap, but in recent years some variety is coming in. The shade trees are usually planted at about 50 feet apart, and the cacao under them at 12 or 15 feet apart. Some of the West Indian Islands with little wind (on the leeward side) are able to dispense with shade altogether. The tree is carefully started in nurseries, and planted out at about six months old, the shade trees being at first closer together and being gradually thinned out, providing much nitrogen for the soil in this way. The suckers which appear on the stem are pruned off, unless one is wanted to replace a stem that may have been injured by disease or otherwise. The tree is apparently somewhat narrowly limited in range of temperature that will suit its growth, for it only succeeds in Ceylon at elevations from 200 to 2500 feet, and not very well at either of these extremes. In more continental climates it is grown at higher elevations, e.g. 3500 feet in Uganda, and it is said even to 5000 or over in Ecuador. The tree begins to bear fruit in about its fourth year, and the yield increases for some years. A fair average yield of dried cacao " beans " is about 3 cwt. per acre per annum, but from 5 to 8 cwt. is not uncommon with Forastero kinds. The ripe fruits are picked by means of a tool not unlike a reaping hook, it being important that they should be cleanly severed from the stem, and they are then opened by means of knives or otherwise and the mucilaginous seeds shaken out. The treatment of these seeds differs slightly in different coun- tries. In Ceylon they are piled in heaps and covered with sand and plantain leaves, or placed in tubs or vats and similarly covered, in order to ferment. The heaps are turned over at intervals, and at the end of from 2 to 4 or even 10 days the fermentation is complete1, when the seeds are taken out, and the thin watery fermented mass of outer pulp is washed off by rinsing in water. Fermentation also ensures the penetration of water into .the interior of the seeds, causing them to swell out and giving them a plump and " bold " appearance. 1 It takes least time with the best varieties. 72 AGKICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II The fermented and washed beans have next to be dried, which is done by spreading them out on mats in the sun for a few hours daily, and keeping them heaped up for the rest of the time. A few days of this treatment causes them to dry in the same plump and bold outline which they had while still wet. In very wet or sunless weather the beans are dried by artificial heat in closed chambers, hot air being drawn over them in various ways, but the results are not in general so good as those obtained by drying in the sun. In some places the beans are simply dried without any fermentation, but this gives a poor product. In the West Indies the washing is often dispensed with. In Venezuela the cacao is " clayed," the wet beans from the fermentation being sprinkled with dried and powdered red clay, and afterwards rubbed between the hands to remove the mucilage. Once dry, the beans are simply bagged and exported to Europe. Lately, however, a manufactory of prepared cacao and chocolate has been opened in Ceylon. The cultivation of cacao is thus a fairly simple one, and as no manufacture is required upon the spot, it commends itself to "native" proprietors, and also to planters in countries where labour is not very plentiful. This is perhaps or probably the reason why its cultivation has grown so enormously in West Africa during the last ten years. In recent years the cultivation of cacao has shown signs of becoming more scientific. In 1897 and later there was a con- siderable outbreak in Ceylon of a canker attacking the stems. Warned by the fate of coffee in the island, the planters of cacao were alarmed, and early measures for the eradication of the canker were taken, under the advice of the Botanical depart- ment. These have been almost entirely successful, except in so far as the cultivation of the old Criollo cacao, which gave to the Ceylon product its very good name and high prices, has been largely replaced by that of the Forastero varieties, whose purple seeds command a lower price. Treatment of the disease was at first almost entirely by excision of the diseased parts, but of late spraying has come in, the fruits, which are extremely liable to attack, being sprayed with Bordeaux mixture or other com- X (a). Drying Cacao in the Sun (Ceylon) X (b). Cacao drying house in Surinam with moveable platforms to roll out (Original in possession of the Kolonial Wirthschaftliche Komitee, Berlin) CH. IV] COFFEE, CACAO OR CHOCOLATE, KOLA, ETC. 73 pound. This is about the first case of spraying, now so very much in use in colder countries, being employed on a large scale in the tropics. Science is also coming in in the use of green manures, various leguminous plants being planted between the rows of cacao, and subsequently being ploughed or dug in, increasing the nitrogen available at small cost. With the great extension of cacao cultivation, which is now taken up in nearly all tropical countries, there will presently be a fairly severe competition, and prices will probably be very low. Improvement must therefore be sought for by those countries which would keep ahead in this matter. Some of the directions in which this improvement may be looked for are in the selection of better varieties for cultivation, e.g. even in the simple substitution of Criollo for Forastero, or the selection of seed from trees that regularly bear large numbers of good pods (for there are well-marked differences in this respect). Another moderately easy thing to manage, and one which repays itself, is the careful grading of the seeds sent to market. If Criollo (pale pink or brown) and Forastero (purple) seeds are sent into the market mixed, the price paid for them will of course be the lower price, that of the Forastero, whereas if they be separated, the Criollo seeds will fetch a much higher price. Though at first the two kinds of seeds look alike, it will soon be found possible to distinguish them, and coolies can be trained to separate the two kinds of seeds with a fair amount of certainty. Prevention of disease, by spraying and in other ways, is another thing that requires careful attention, cacao being very liable to various diseases. Kola or Cola. Another very important cultivation, more perhaps from the point of view of its local uses than from that of export, though the latter is large, is that of the Kola nut, which is extensively cultivated in West Africa from Loango on the south to southern Senegambia on the north. The con- sumption of these nuts is one of the great features of West African life, they being used both as a food and as a stimulant. They are sent in token of reconciliation, are used like olives before a meal, are said to make bad water drinkable, are a cure 74 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II for alcoholism, a stimulus to cheerfulness ; in fact they take the place of tobacco and other things in other countries. The Kola tree (Cola acuminata, and perhaps other species) has been introduced into other countries in the tropics, e.g. into Ceylon, but has not proved sufficiently profitable to form the basis of any important industry, and the export is as yet prac- tically entirely from West Africa. The tree is closely related to the cacao, and grows about 20 to 45 feet high, with panicles of flowers which give rise to strings of fruits, each fruit having two to six rays, each ray a pod containing a few seeds, for which the tree is cultivated. The essential principle in these is caffein, and they contain about 2-|°/0 of it, or a good deal more than coffee does. The nut containing also a full third of its weight of starch, besides other matters, forms a good food stuff, as does cacao, and were it not for its unpleasant flavour would probably compete very closely with the latter ; so far, however, it has only come into use when mixed with cacao, and in certain drinks. The tree is rarely planted in plantations, but is cleared in the forest, or forms part of the mixed cultivation of the West Africans. It begins to bear at about seven years old, and produces perhaps about 50 fruits a year on the average. The principal crop is in December, and there is a second in April. The seeds are gathered, and left for a few days, when the seed coats can be easily rubbed off, and they are then packed in leaves, and kept damp, so as to travel as fresh as possible. For export they are carefully dried in the sun. The value of the exports from the Gold Coast Colony in 1919 was about £250,000. By mixing it with cacao, a considerable quantity of kola has been gradually brought into consumption in England. Guaran£. This plant (Paullinia Cupana is a good deal used in South America, but is hardly exported. The tree is not unlike the cacao tree. The fruits are collected, and laid in water to loosen the skin, which is then removed and the fruits dried by the fire. An infusion like chocolate is made from them. They contain a high percentage of cafein, and would be useful for mixing with other drinks, as they have but little flavour. Excellent aerated drinks are made from them in Brazil. CHAPTER V COCONUTS AND OTHER PALMS Coconuts. The coconut1 palm, Cocos nucifera, is the most widely cultivated plant in the tropics, but, except in Ceylon, the Philippine Islands, South India, Trinidad and parts of Polynesia, not as a rule upon a large scale for export of the products, but in the mixed cultivation of the peasants. There is probably no single plant capable of so large a variety of uses, whether locally or for export. So old and so universal is the cultivation in the tropics, that even yet the original native country of the palm is uncertain, though opinion seems to favour the western islands of Polynesia from which it has been carried by the currents of the ocean to Malaya, Ceylon, India, Africa, etc. The fruit being enclosed in a thick fibrous coating, can be carried by the sea for a very long time without losing the power of germination, and hence this palm is one of the earliest things to appear on any newly formed land, . such as a coral reef, in the tropics. While in a small way the cultivation is important in America and in Africa, it is to Ceylon and other eastern lands that one must look for large and important plantations. The palm flourishes best in the damper coastal regions, but is also cultivated inland, and up to elevations of 2500 feet or over. The cultivation is mainly in native hands, though in recent years many Europeans have invested in what is sometimes called the consols of planting. The palm is the most common 1 I adopt the correct spelling of this word. It is much to be regretted that the spelling cocoanut should have crept in, as it leads to much confusion with cocoa or cacao. Matters are further complicated by the existence of coca, cocoes, coco-plum, coco-yam, etc. 76 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II and regular constituent of the mixed cultivations already mentioned, and described in Chapter XIV below. The usual idea about a palm is that it grows vertically upwards and is crowned by a tuft of leaves. This, however, is not quite true about the coconut, the stem of which is prac- tically never erect, but grows upwards in a more or less graceful curve. Along the sea coast the stems of the outermost palms project over the water, and this is often given as the reason of the curve, but in actual fact it would seem to be a case of the stem bending towards the light, as the outer stems of a clump usually all bend outwards, whether over water or not. On properly managed estates the palms are planted in regular rows, and at about 25 feet apart, whereas in the ordi- nary native garden they are planted anyhow, usually mixed with other trees, or if planted alone then much too closely. The palm begins to bear fruit about the fifth year, and bears for seventy or more years thereafter. The crop varies very much, but perhaps on the average is from 40 to 75 nuts per tree per annum on an ordinary estate. The coconut, as might be expected, occurs in a great many varieties with rather small differences. The two chief and most conspicuous groups of varieties are those with green nuts, known in Ceylon as ordinary nuts, and those with yellow nuts, known in Ceylon as king coconuts. Some kinds have a larger yield of fibre, some give larger nuts. On a good estate the trees are planted out from nurseries, but in the villagers' gardens are often planted out as seeds. In Ceylon and other equatorial countries the latter get but little cultivation till they arrive at maturity, a fact which appeals with some force to the ordinary villager, but in India, etc., greater care is taken of them, especially in the north about Bombay, etc. The tropical villager obtains from this palm many of the necessaries of life. The large leaves are woven into " cadjans " for thatching, into mats, baskets, etc. ; their stalks and midribs make fences, brooms, yokes, and many other utensils. The trunk affords rafters, beams, canoes, troughs, and many other articles of furniture, etc. The bud or " cabbage " at the apex CH. V] COCONUTS AND OTHER PALMS 77 of the stem (of course there is only one, and when this is removed the palm dies, so that it is not as a rule taken till the palm is old) makes an excellent vegetable and is also made into preserves, etc. When the palm is flowering, the main flower stalk can be tapped for "toddy," a drink like the Mexican "pulque," containing much sugar. Evaporation of the toddy furnishes a coarse but good sugar known as jaggery ; its fermen- tation gives an alcoholic drink, from which distillation produces the strong spirit known as arrack, while further fermentation produces vinegar. The fruits while young contain a pint or more of cool sweetish watery fluid, which affords a most refreshing drink. As the nut ripens the water decreases and the kernel hardens. The nuts are gathered at about ten months old. Their kernels are eaten raw or in curries and in other ways, milk is expressed from them for flavouring curries and other purposes, and oil is extracted from them by boiling. The commercial oil, in which there is an enormous trade for soapmaking and other uses, is obtained by first drying the kernels in the sun or by other artificial means till they form what is known as " copra," and then pressing this copra in mills. About two-thirds of the weight is obtained as oil, and the refuse, "cake" or poonac, forms a valuable fattening food for cattle or poultry. The oil is occasionally used for lighting, but its great use, especially in Europe and America, is for soapmaking ; it also forms a good hairdressing, and is largely used for the manufacture of candles, as it separates under pressure into a hard wax-like body, stearine, and a liquid oleine. The shell of the nut, after the kernel is taken out, forms drinking cups, bowls, spoons, handles, and many other things : it also makes an excellent smokeless fuel, and yields a good charcoal. In recent years a large industry has sprung up in Ceylon in desiccated coconut, i.e. the kernel of the nut with some of the oil expressed, sliced and dried in special desiccators. The pro- duct is soldered up in lead-lined boxes, and exported for use in confectionery. The thick outer husk of the coconut, rarely seen in Europe or in North America, contains a large number of long stout 78 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II fibres running lengthwise. The villagers obtain these by split- ting the husks, rotting them in water, and then beating out the softer tissue from between the fibres. There are also many large mills where special machinery is used for preparing coir, as this fibre is called. The uses of coir are many : the fibres are graded according to their stoutness, and used for making brushes, yarn, rope, mats, and many other purposes. There is a large export from Ceylon and other tropical countries. Though very many tropical countries have more or less export trade in the products of the coconut, Ceylon, both for home consumption and for export, stands almost at the top of the trade, and the figures of the chief coconut product exports during 1919 may be quoted: Coconut oil 675,000 cwt. Desiccated coconut 675,000 cwt. Copra 1,759,000 cwt. Besides large quanties of poonac, coir, coconuts, arrack, etc. The export from the Philippines in 1920 was over 100,000 tons. The trade in coconut products continues to increase rapidly and, though many new countries are now taking part in it, and the extension of planting in Ceylon never ceases, the prices obtained have not fallen but risen. New uses are constantly being discovered for the oil, etc. The complete removal from the oil of its " coconutty " smell has now almost been accom- plished, and butter-like bodies can be made from it, which have already an extensive use in cooking, and will probably come more and more into use as they are perfected. There are many directions also in which the cultivation of the coconut is open to improvement. For instance, as in cacao, the use of green manures will probably be found to give better crops at less cost, provided the manuring plants be not attractive to rats, as some that have been tried or suggested, e.g. ground-nuts, are. More careful cultivation is required, and in native gardens the distance apart of the palms should often be much increased. This is a difficult point to teach to a native of the tropics ; he almost always has the idea that the more plants he can get on to his ground, the larger return he will get. A striking instance of this came under my notice some years a 2- CO « c -S a 5 1 ^ ^ J§ -2 «' ^ Z * ^ -~ CH. V] COCONUTS AND OTHER PALMS 79 ago. An estate near to Peradeniya, supposed to be a cacao estate, had been continually planted up with coconuts, areca nuts, pepper, crotons, and other products, till in 1902 the average number of trees per acre was no less than 512. The estate then gave % cwt. of dry cacao per acre, and a small quantity of the other products, and was losing money at the rate of Rs. 40 per acre per annum. In 1902 a system of cutting out the extra trees was adopted, and now the estate contains only about 300 trees per acre, almost all cacao, the cacao crop is 3£ cwt. per acre, and the estate is profitable. Another direction in which great care is required is in the selection of nuts for seed ; the very best nuts, i.e. regarded from the point of view of the object of the plantation, whether for copra, for nuts, for desiccated coconut, for oil, or for other purposes, should always' be picked for seed, to improve the next generation. On the whole this has been done in Ceylon though not in the Seychelle Islands, and a recent lot of Ceylon nuts sent there was found to exceed the local nuts sometimes in the proportion of three to one. It is also possible that careful hybridisation might improve the varieties of the palm in culti- vation. Different varieties should be tried in the same place, for it is quite possible that a better return might, for example, be obtained by changing the variety cultivated, e.g. by abandon- ing the cultivation of oil nuts, and taking to good fibre nuts. It is also possible that quickly maturing nuts might be selected, which would in time considerably reduce the period of waiting for the palms to flower (now about five or six years). A tendency in coconut cultivation just now seems to be the opening of very large plantations under European management. Such plantations can turn out large and uniform supplies of copra, for instance, whereas the copra obtained from the innumerable small native plantations is of very variable quality. Palmyra Palm. Another palm of considerable importance is the Palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer) supposed to be a native of both tropical Africa and tropical Asia, and now very extensively cultivated in tropical India and Ceylon, especially 80 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II in districts which are a trifle dry for the coconut. It is a tall straight-growing palm, fruiting only at one season of the year. It has innumerable native and local uses, an old Tamil song enumerating 801, but from the point of view of export trade, the most important product of the palm is the fibres at the bases of the leaves, which are exported under the name of Palmyra fibre, and used for making brushes, hard brooms, and for other purposes. As far as local uses are concerned, the greatest is the preparation of sugar or jaggery, and of toddy for drinking, whilst arrack is also made. The fruit is edible, the large fan-shaped leaves are used as thatch, and for fencing, the leaves cut into strips are employed in weaving baskets, toys, matting, etc., the stems are used as building posts and rafters, and as piles in salt water, for which purpose they are very well adapted. In many other ways this palm is almost as useful as the coconut. Areca Palm. This is another palm the cultivation of which is of great importance in the East, for nearly every native " chews betel," i.e. he chews a mixture of areca nut, lime, and various flavouring matters, such as tobacco or cardamoms, wrapped up in a leaf of the betel pepper, Piper Betle. This act turns the saliva red like blood, and is somewhat disgusting to watch, but it must not be hastily condemned. For one thing it gives the rice-feeding native some lime in his diet, an item which is often lacking in it. Now that betel chewing is being to some extent replaced by smoking, this question of how to provide lime becomes more pressing. The cultiva- tion of this palm is carried on upon a large scale in Ceylon, India, Java, etc., usually in the mixed garden cultivation of the villagers, but sometimes in regular plantations. The palm bears at about the sixth year, and when in full fruit each gives about 300 nuts a year. Kitul or Toddy Palm. This palm (Caryota urens) is cultivated in the mixed garden cultivation of the natives of Ceylon and wherever else it is indigenous. The flower stalk is tapped for toddy, just as in the coconut, and sugar is also made CH. V] COCONUTS AND OTHER PALMS 81 from it. From the bases of the leaves a fibre is got as in the Palmyra palm. Other palms are also used, e.g. those mentioned under sugar in a previous chapter, the talipot (Corypha umbraculifera) the leaves of which provide umbrellas, books, and other things, the royal and cabbage palms of Cuba (Oreodoxa regia and oleracea), the oil palm of West Africa (below), and many others. CHAPTER VI SPICES Cinnamon. This spice was the earliest article of export from Ceylon upon any important scale, and was much the most famous of the island's early exports to Europe. Until 1833 its cultivation was a Government monopoly, first under the Dutch and afterwards under the British Government. " The trade was at its height when Nees wrote a disquisition upon it in 1823; but opinion was already arraying itself against the rigidly exclusive system under which it was conducted. This was looked upon as the more unjustifiable, owing to the popular belief that the monopoly was one created by nature ; and that prohibitions became vexatious where competition was impossible. Accord- ingly in 1832 the odious monopoly was abandoned; the Government ceased to be the sole exporters of cinnamon, and thenceforward the merchants of Colombo and Galle were per- mitted to take a share in the trade, on paying to the crown an export duty of three shillings a pound, which was afterwards reduced to one. " The adoption of the first step inevitably necessitated a second. The merchants felt, and with justice, that the struggle was unequal so long as the Government, with its great estates and large capital, was their opposing competitor; and hence, in 1840, the final expedient was adopted by the crown of divesting itself altogether of its property in the plantations." Since that period the cultivation has greatly extended, chiefly on the light sandy soils near the southwest coast, where the spice is native ; and though various other countries grow trifling quantities, no serious competitor has yet arisen for Ceylon. At the present time about 35,000 acres are in culti- vation. Left to itself, the cinnamon plant (Cinnamomum XIII (a). Preparing Cinnamon XIII (b). Picking Cardamons CH. VI ] SPICES 83 zeylanicum) would form a small tree, but in cultivation it is kept coppiced, sending up long willowy shoots, whose bark, peeled off and dried and rolled into quills, forms the spice of commerce. The cinnamon peelers form a separate caste among the Sinhalese. The finer quills are made up into bales, while an inferior grade is shipped under the name " chips." A considerable quantity of cinnamon oil is distilled in the island from broken quills and larger fragments of bark. Another oil, with something of the smell of oil of cloves, is distilled from the leaves, but only rarely, while camphor is obtained from the roots. Cinnamon is used mainly in confectionery, incense, etc. A considerable proportion of the exported chips are used in Europe for the distillation of oil. The Seychelles are now producing a good deal of oil. The Ceylon exports in recent years have been : 1911 51,086 cwt. 1920 34,846 The cultivation and harvesting of cinnamon being very simple, and Ceylon having a practical monopoly of the trade, which is no longer seriously increasing, it is somewhat difficult to make any recommendations for the improvement of this cultivation. Green manuring may probably prove of considerable use, and more careful planting and cultivation are required. A careful study of the formation of the oil and its best method of dis- tillation are also needed. It would seem, on the face of it, rather absurd that so much oil should have to be made in Europe, and that all the labour of making up the chips should in a sense be wasted. It is quite possible that oil may be profitably obtained from the green twigs. Pepper. This was the great staple of the spice trade of the Middle Ages, and was then exported solely from Malabar. Five ships a year were loaded with it in the days of Portuguese supremacy. Gradually the cultivation in India (and Ceylon) died away, and the Straits Settlements took the chief place. At 6—2 84 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II the present time there is a very considerable trade in this spice, of which over 20,000 tons are annually exported from Singapore, chiefly the produce of the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States, but also of some of the Dutch Islands, especially the islands of Rhio, opposite Singapore. The common pepper, Piper nigrum, is a native of south- eastern Asia, and is a climbing plant which if left alone grows to a height of about twenty feet. It is cultivated in damp climates, with a rainfall of 80 inches, or over, in the shade of large trees, at distances of about seven feet apart, being planted as cuttings. Sometimes the cuttings are trained upon artificial supports, sometimes they are trained up the living trees which were left for shade. The vine does not flower for about three years, and comes into full bearing some years later. The fruit, which is the part to be gathered, is a string of small berries, greenish at first, then reddish, and finally yellow. Gathered and dried as they are, these form black pepper, but if the outer skins are removed (in various ways in different countries) before they are dried, they form white pepper. The yield is said to be very variable, differing in different years, and varying from half a pound to seven pounds a plant. This difference in the yield points out one way in which it is very probable that the yield of pepper can be improved, namely by a careful selection of seed from the best bearers. A careful study of the manuring of pepper is also required, with a view to finding out which manures give the best returns. Betel-Pepper (Piper Betle) is largely cultivated in Ceylon, India, Java, and other Eastern countries for its leaves, which are chewed with lime and with the fruits of Areca palms in the universal masticatory. The chewing of the leaves, which contain an oil, is said to be good for the health, and the lime provides an item which is often somewhat lacking in the diet of a rice-feeding people. The plants are grown as cuttings, sometimes against poles, sometimes against planted supports. The ground is very care- fully and deeply tilled, and manuring is carried out with great CH. Vl] SPICES 85 care. In Ceylon it is done only with the leaves of Groton lacciferum, other manures being rejected. The leaves are picked after the first year, and in different places the plant is allowed to go on from one to six or more years in bearing. The cultivation is very profitable, but there is a large outlay before any return can be obtained, and considerable risks are run from attacks of disease. Cardamoms. Though an important industry in Ceylon and Southern India, this is as yet a comparatively unknown spice in Europe or America. It is chiefly used in India for confectionery, cooking, and masticating, but is steadily coming into use elsewhere, and deserves to be more widely known. About 7000 acres are now devoted to the growth of this spice in Ceylon, and about the same in Southern India. In Ceylon it is chiefly grown in the mountain districts north of Kandy, at an elevation of 3000 to 4000 feet. The plant itself (Elettaria Cardamomum) belongs to the ginger family, and is not unlike ginger in appearance, but very much larger, growing to a height of about 5 to 10 feet. It is cultivated in clumps under the shade of the trees of the forest, which has its undergrowth thinned out to make room for it. The flowers are borne in little racemes, and are succeeded by little capsule fruits, which are picked, spread out in trays or on barbecues (or drying grounds), and slowly dried and bleached. The essential part of the spice is the seed contained in the capsules, but the latter are always dried with the seeds, and so far as possible without splitting. If the seeds were sold without the capsule, they could be easily adulterated with other similar and less valuable seeds. Lately a considerable demand for green or unbleached cardamoms has sprung up. The exports of cardamoms from Ceylon in recent years, have been 1901 559,704 Ibs. 1905 829T276 Ibs. 1902 615,922 1903 909,418 1910 639,007 1904 995,680 1920 374,216 Until fifteen years ago the cultivation of this spice was very profitable, and of course there was a rush into planting it, 86 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II with results which may be anticipated. A cess has now been established in Ceylon, similar to that on tea, every pound of cardamoms exported having to pay one cent1, and with the produce of this cess it is intended to advertise the spice and to endeavour to open new markets for its consumption. It is as yet too early to speak of the success or otherwise of this measure, but in the meantime, there has been a drop from the enormous figures of export of 1904*. Nutmegs. The nutmeg plant (Myristica moschata Thunb., M.fragrans Houtt.) is a native of the Molucca islands, formerly known as the Spice islands. For a long time the Dutch were able to maintain a monopoly of this spice, as of others, burning any excessive supply ; but it was finally carried by the French to Mauritius and Cayenne, and has gradually become distri- buted over the world. It is said that one of the ways in which it was first carried from the Moluccas was by the large fruit- eating pigeons, which swallow the whole seed, large as it is, for the sake of the mace, and afterwards throw it up. The nutmeg plant forms a small tree, from 30 to 50 feet in height, and is best cultivated in a loamy soil, at a height not over 1500 or 1800 feet above the sea. It is raised from seed, and the trees are planted about 30 feet apart. The great disadvantage in cultivating the nutmeg is that it is dioecious, i.e. that it bears male flowers on one tree, and female on another. Consequently the planter is liable to find, after waiting about seven years for the trees to flower, that he has got far too many male trees, which of course are useless for fruit. On the average, perhaps, about half the trees will prove male, when really one in about five or six is sufficient. Attempts have of late been made to graft male shoots on to the female trees, but of course this does not get over the difficulty of distinguishing the trees when young. The tree bears when about seven years old, and, to judge from those in the Peradeniya gardens in Ceylon, until at least a hundred years old. The fruit is like a large yellowish plum, with a fleshy rind, which when fully ripe splits into two halves, 1 I.e. every hundredweight Re. 1.12 or Is. 6aclB. FEBt W LD 21A-60m-10,'65 (P7763slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY