AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS IN THE TROPICS 227 



the number of native capitalist planters of all grades, and to 

 put the peasantry so far into possession of capital that they 

 have no excuse for lack of progress. If after the preliminary 

 factors have been put into action in their case, they still do not 

 progress, then progress is practically hopeless among them, and 

 we must fall back on the two ideals first mentioned. We hav^e 

 no right, however, to do this till w^e have given the peasantry 

 every chance to go ahead. 



It is in these later factors that science, strictly so called, is 

 mainly of service. They may be said to be the applications of 

 the natural sciences to improvements of existing crops, methods, 

 cattle and tools. Out of all these sciences will develop a 

 subsidiary science of tropical agriculture, just as one of the 

 agriculture of the temperate zones has grown up. 



Thirty years ago the applications of botany to agriculture 

 w^ere confined in the tropics to the introduction through botanic 

 gardens of new plants for culture, and to an investigation of 

 the local flora, in general confined to the identification of the 

 actual plants of which it consisted. We have dealt above with 

 the introduction of plants and shown how in this respect the 

 usefulness of a garden must continually diminish. In some 

 places this fact was the only one to be recognised but in others 

 the old botanic gardens have expanded into large modern 

 departments of agriculture, forming very important centres for 

 the carrying out of the researches upon which in the long 

 run progress depends. Especially has this been the case 

 in the famous gardens of Buitenzorg in Java. Not only has 

 the garden itself been instrumental in carrying out many re- 

 searches in pure botany, but numerous laboratories have been 

 established in it for the study of the scientific problems that 

 arise in special reference to single cultivations. There is a 

 laboratory for tea, one for cinchona, one for tobacco and so on. 

 In each of these there is usually a staff of three scientific men, 

 who are expected to devote the bulk of their time to research. 



The applications of botany to agriculture are many nowa- 

 days, not only as formerly in the introduction of useful plants. 

 The study of fungi has yielded valuable results, so has that of 

 vegetable physiology, of systematic botany and of plant-breeding. 

 It will be well to deal with these in order. 



The first great recorded attack of a fungus upon a cultivated 

 plant, and the worst, was the attack of Hemileia vastatrix upon 



