EuTLAND. — History of the Pacific. 25 



a choice of situations the forest land is invariably preferred. 

 In North America, where there are wide areas of open land, 

 the agricultural operations of the serai-hunting tribes, un- 

 acquainted with the use of metal, have been thus described : 

 " The Indians belt (coupeut) the trees about 2ft. or 3ft. from 

 the ground ; then they trim off all the branches and burn 

 them at the foot of the tree, in order to kill it, and afterwards 

 take away the roots. This being done, the women carefully 

 clean up the ground between the trees, and at every step they 

 dig a round hole, in which they sow nine or ten grains of 

 maize, which they have first carefully selected and soaked for 

 some days in water."* 



The Dyhof cultivations general throughout the moun- 

 tainous parts of Hindostan are dependent on the forest land ; 

 and in Polynesia the land at first rescued from the forest is, 

 after being in cultivation a few years, allowed to grow up in 

 trees, when it is again cleared and brought under crop.]: 



To any one who has resided some time in newly-settled 

 country and devoted his attention to agriculture the reason 

 for this seeming waste of labour is obvious. Naturally open 

 grass or fern land is generally unproductive until after it has 

 been broken up and exposed to the sun and air for some time. 

 Forest land, on the contrary, is most fertile immediately after 

 the timber has been burned off, and is also for a time free 

 from weeds. Forest fires and the dense luxuriant growth of 

 shrubs that appear after the destruction of the large timber 

 may have suggested this primitive mode of husbandry. As 

 many of these shrubs — for instance, the raspberries that come 

 up on clearings in North America, the pioroporo (Solamim 

 aviculare) and the Cape gooseberry (Physalis peruviana) that 

 follow the destruction of the New Zealand bush — produce 

 edible fruit, even the idea of agriculture may have been thus 

 originated. 



The most important effect of agriculture as regards modern 

 civilization has been the enormous increase of population it 

 gave rise to. It has been estimated that, of pastoral nomads 

 like the Kirghiz of Central Asia, France would support about 

 fifty thousand, and the whole pastoral zone of northern Europe 

 not n)ore than a million, or about half the population of the 

 Lower Nile Valley at the time Memphis was founded and the 

 pyramids built. 



In the earliest historical period the great mass of the Old- 

 World population was contained within a narrow zone, ex- 

 tending from China on the east along the southern portion of 



* " The Mounds of the Mississippi." Lucien Carr. 

 t "Highland.s of Central India." Capt. J. Forsyth. 

 I " Jottings in the Pacific." Rev. W. Wyatt Gill. 



