THE HUSBANDRY OF THE CANE 



129 



cultivator ; usually the application of fertilizer is delayed until after plant- 

 ing. Plate XI (page 112) shows a Hawaiian cane field ready for planting. 



Mauritius. — For very many years past no new land has been available 

 for cane growing in Mauritius ; an essential feature of the system of cane 

 growing there followed is the well-advised green manuring given the land 

 after the last (generally third) ratoon crop has been taken off. After the 

 land has been for a variable period under the green crop, this is cut down and 

 buried or burnt off ; after lining off the field the holes in which the cane is 

 planted are made with the hoe. The entire preparation of the land is done 

 with very cheap manual labour of East Indian origin. 



Java. — The imperative needs of the large native population of Java 

 demand a carefully regulated system of land tenure, and the self-contained 

 plantations found elsewhere are absent from Java. Cane is only planted one 

 year in every three, the land at other times being in the hands of native 

 cultivators ; cane generally follows rice, and a number of small separated 

 areas of rice are united into one cane field, the area of which is from one 

 houw (i • 97 acres) to 100 bouws, with an average of from 10 to 20 hotiws. 



The first operation is to level the small embankments that have been made 

 in the rice fields, and to separate the terraces and fields belonging to different 

 owners. The rest of the operations are thus described by Prinsen Geerligs^ : 



" As soon as the rice is reaped, and sometimes during that operation, a deep 

 ditch is dug round the field in order to drain off superfluous water. Owing to the 

 wet rice cultivation the soil has been saturated with water during the previous two 

 or three months, all kinds of reduction processes have taken place and oxygen fails 

 entirely. In order then to render the land fit for cultivation the soil must be 

 exposed to the action of sun and wind. To this end the field is divided by trans- 

 verse ditches into plots of one-quarter or one-fifth of an acre, and between these 

 ditches the rows in which the cane is to be planted afterwards are dug. Ordinarily 

 these rows are 30 feet long, i foot wide, a little over i foot deep, and 4 or 5 feet 

 apart. The excavated soil is heaped up between the rows. In some places where 

 the nature of the soil so allows, the land is ploughed first and afterwards the rows 

 are dug with the native spade. When the field is thus prepared it has the aspect 

 of a large number of trenches, which remain exposed to the sun's rays for about six 

 weeks. It is still unkno^vn what chemical action takes place during the drying of 

 the soil, but experience has taught us that this period of lying fallow is indispensable 

 in obtaining a good crop. The wet lumps of soil dry up during this operation, 

 crumble to pieces and assume a lighter colour, causing the mass of moist cold hard 

 lumps to change into a loose greyish powdery soil. During the weathering all 

 grass is carefully weeded out, and this is continued after planting until the cane 

 has grown so high that it keeps down the weeds by its own shadow. At the end 

 of the drying time the soil in the rows is loosened a little and the cane tops are 

 then planted in them." 



A ground plan of a Java cane field wiU 

 then appear as in Fig. 42 ; at « is a ditch 

 surrounding the field, into which drain the 

 cross ditches, which are in turn fed by the 

 small drains c separating the cane beds e ; 

 the cane rows are at h running across the 

 beds. Plate XV (page 125) shows a Javanese 

 field ready for planting. 



In the literature of the cane as it relates 

 to Java reference is often made to the Rey- 

 noso system. Re3nioso was an eminent 

 Cuban agronomist, who published in 1865 

 a treatise on the agriculture of the sugar 



Fig. 42 



