CHAPTER VI 



TOOLS, TILLAGE, MANURING, CROPPING, ETC. 



Tools. The more complex and efficient tools, such as are 

 so largely superseding hand labour in Europe and America, are 

 but little employed in the tropics. The reasons for this are 

 several, the chief being that hand labour has hitherto been so 

 cheap that there has been but little demand for labour saving, 

 that the complex tools require good workmen to use them, and 

 good mechanics to mend them, neither being readily forth- 

 coming in the tropics, and that the better tools are in general 

 too expensive for the ordinary cultivator to buy, while coopera- 

 tive purchase, such as is so common in France, Belgium, and 

 other countries, has not yet come in. 



For simple tillage of the ground, the most common tool in 

 the more equatorial countries is probably the large hoe, or 

 m&moti, as it is called by the Tamil coolies of Ceylon, while 

 further north the plough is far more common. The mamoti is 

 a very strong and heavy hoe, with a handle about 3 feet long, 

 and a blade at right angles to it, 9 inches wide, and 7 inches 

 deep, but varying according to the work it is designed for, 

 those used in wet rice fields, for instance, being much larger 

 and with longer handles. With it the coolie digs, by swinging it 

 like a pickaxe, and he also uses it for gentle digging, scraping, 

 and for other purposes. The spade is hardly ever used. 



The plough, used in India and tropical America, and in rice 

 cultivation in the equatorial countries, is usually a primitive 

 instrument, as a glance at Plate XXII will show. It consists 

 essentially of two pieces of wood fastened together at right 

 angles, with a metal point to the horizontal one, and drawn by 



