EuTLAND. — History of the Pacific. 27 



agriculture. In the southern portion, where the monotonous 

 and regular tropical climate prevails, it is only necessary to 

 commit the seed roughly to the soil, regardless of season, to 

 insure a return. In other parts the time of sowing has to be 

 studied, and care bestowed on the ground. From this region, 

 if we include in it the islands of the adjacent seas, a large pro- 

 portion of the Old- World species, cultivated more than four 

 thousand years, has been derived. From Chinese records we 

 gather that five of the cereals, including wheat and rice, were 

 cultivated in that country 4,700 years ago, rice being un- 

 doubtedly an indigenous species there brought into cultivation. 



Excepting European agriculture of the present century, it 

 is in this region — in China and Japan — the art has attained 

 its highest perfection. Within it also we find the rudest 

 attempts at cultivation of which we have any knowledge. 

 We can even go further back than this, for in the sago-eaters 

 of the Isle of Ceram''' we have a people living almost exclu- 

 sively on vegetable food without cultivating the plants on 

 which they depend, for the various species of Bumphvus from 

 which the sago is prepared are not sown, though the plants 

 have individual owners. Here, then, it seems reasonable to 

 conclude agriculture first took the form of a regular art, and 

 that from hence it spread westward to the shores of the 

 Mediterranean, and eastward among the islands of the Pacific. 

 As already stated, Egypt has been an agricultural state for 

 more than six thousand years. It may now be asked. When 

 did the art enter Polynesia? The presence of the seedless 

 breadfruits and bananas, besides proving that the countless 

 islands of eastern Polynesia wherein they occur were regu- 

 larly colonised, show that agriculture must have been well 

 advanced in the Malay Archipelago when this colonisation 

 took place, the growing of plants from suckers and cuttings, 

 and how to transport them across broad expanses of ocean, 

 being evidently understood. Although Polynesian agriculture 

 is certainly less ancient than Malayan, we must accord to it a 

 considerable antiquity if we accept as evidence the absence 

 of certain cultivated esculents. 



From historical sources we learn that Java was colonised 

 during the first century of the Christian era by the Javanas, 

 who, by some authorities, are supposed to be descended from 

 the Greek invaders of India.! With this colonisation the 

 cereals, Legmninoscs, and other cultivated plants commonly 

 diffused in the more civilised portion of the Old World would 

 be introduced into the Malay Islands if they were not pre- 

 viously there. As none of the species referred to were 



* "The Malay Archipelago." A. R. Wallace. 

 t"Orissa." W. W. Hunter. 



