AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS IN THE TROPICS 51 



as they survive on the land, make it impossible to grow any 

 crops without tillage for their suppression. 



Chena is a very primitive stage of agriculture, but it is very 

 widely practised and makes certain demands upon those who 

 carry it on, which were not made upon those only collecting 

 wild jungle-stuffs. There is no absolute necessity for private 

 ownership of land, nor for any facilities for transport, but the 

 chena cultivator must have a certain amount of capital to tide 

 over the period of waiting while the crop ripens. This capital 

 need not, of course, be money ; it may be simply the stored 

 food from an unusually successful raid upon the produce of 

 the jungle, or it may be an advance of food-stuffs from some 

 other person. The important point is that capital is needed. 



Progress beyond chena takes two directions : on the one 

 side the development of the " mixed garden," on the other 

 that of the "field." The mixed garden is a very characteristic 

 feature of the agriculture of many if not most tropical countries 

 at the present day. It is simply a casual mixture of useful 

 trees, shrubs and herbs. A mango may stand next to a jak 

 {Artocarpus integrifolia), and both to a coco-nut, while the 

 space between is filled in with bananas, oranges, and other 

 smaller plants ; on the ground grow a few herbs, but the 

 soil is generally covered with grass, affording grazing to a few 

 miserable specimens of cattle. Such a garden would naturally 

 arise from a chena as perennial crops came to be appreciated 

 and planted. 



The mixed garden is a kind of cul-de-sac in agriculture, 

 for only by giving it up in favour of something better can 

 there be progress. It makes greater demands than did the 

 chena, for not only is capital required but also some settled 

 ownership of land — a man will not plant a mixed garden upon 

 common land. 



In the other direction the chena might develop into the field, 

 or portion of ground kept permanently tilled and free from weeds, 

 upon which annual crops were grown, at least one every year. 

 Such agriculture would also require settled land tenure and 

 more capital than any of the preceding forms. Labour would 

 have to be more systematic and more regularly applied, and 

 if the field were anything beyond the very smallest area, hired 

 labour would also be needed. 



Once agriculture takes the field type, the way is open for 



