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1 1 ga. 



A FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 



OF THE 



«-«>*4l 



IMPERIAL DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FOR THE WEST INDIES. '%£* 



Vol. XIV. No. 350. 



BARBADOS, SEPTEMBER 25, ! 



i \d. 



On Understanding a Crop and Its 

 Requirements. 



HE tropica] planter unlike his confrere 

 farther north, is primarily interested in only 

 one crop and this crop is generally of the 

 perennial sort. Thus we speak ol the sugar-cane or 

 rubber planter, or of the cacao oi citrus grower, signi- 

 fying in doing so thai each in his line is more or less 

 a specialist. Such being tb case it behoves tb 

 planter to concentrate attention to the besl of his 

 ability on his crop's requirements, and to try to 

 imderstand the inner working ol the individual plant, 



The importance of doing so- is rendered still more 

 apparent when we remember that with mosl tropical 

 crops the individual plant is of a relative!) large size 

 allowing only a comparative!) small number to the acre. 



In the first instance the stud) of the individual 



comes within the provin f physiologist rather than 



of the planter, and it will prove instructive to enquire 

 to what extent the physiologist has born at work. With 

 some crops he has boon much more active than with 

 others. The outstanding work on the individual plant 

 is that of Balis, whoso work on Egyptian cotton is both 

 exemplary and suggestive. This investigator has 

 studied the cotton plant under a largo number 

 of different conditions, and has broughl to light many 

 now facts concerning its behaviour under a varying 

 environment. Thus he lias shown thai the plant's 

 activities are practically arrested during the hotter 

 hours of the day, and thai in Egypt, boll shedding is 

 the result of root asphyxiation. Similar in some 

 respects to Ball's work on the cotton plant is Copeland'a 

 i most igation of the coco nut. This latter scientist has 

 demonstrated the detrimental effect of shade upon the 

 plant, and has opened up quite a novel line of thought 

 in regard to the measurement of the plant's rate 

 of development by means of the hat' stalks. On the 

 basis of this last mentioned observation it will be 

 possible to express in arithmetical terms the 

 development of a whoh grove. A third crop which is 

 being studied physiologically is Para rubber. In this 

 connexion mention maj be made of Campbell's recent 

 work in Ceylon, which has shown that the effect of 

 tipping on the ru liber tree is quite local; consequently 



the distributi if tapping is equivalent to resting the 



tree — a conclusion of considerable importance. In 

 regard to the crops mentioned, we have nol referred to 

 strictly mycological or entomological work, nor even to 



