132 AGRICULTUKE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II 



or egg-fruit, bandakai or okra, pulses and other things. In 

 Malaya the durian takes the place of the jak, in the West 

 Indies the areca is little grown; and so on, but the general look 

 of these jungly gardens is much the same. Nothing is pruned 

 or properly taken care of, with the result of a miserably poor 

 yield, but the villager does not realise this, nor if he did would 

 he be likely to change to any system which would involve more 

 work, or more expenditure of capital. Until the provision of 

 cheap capital has been thoroughly well attended to, there is 

 but little chance of any alteration in this system. Could the 

 villager even afford to manure his ground or to till it, it is 

 probable that his yields would be increased, but want of capital 

 and dislike to more work prevents this. 



No system is adhered to in planting out such gardens, but 

 in actual fact it is found that their composition is not unlike, in 

 any one district, in the kinds and numbers of plants upon any 

 one acre. As we cannot suppose that the villagers copy one 

 another in the numbers of plants, though they probably do in 

 regard to the kinds, we must look upon this wild jungly garden 

 as representing what is now usually termed a " plant-society/* 

 suited to the soil upon which it is growing, and to the general 

 conditions of life in the place. 



The great area devoted to this form of cultivation if indeed 

 it can be called cultivation at all indicates the kind of thing 

 that is likely to happen with a purely peasant population, 

 unstimulated by the presence of more enterprising agricul- 

 turists who have some capital at their disposal, who can give 

 work upon their estates, and who can create a trade that will 

 absorb anything in the nature of " export " products that the 

 villagers may have to sell. A country in which there are none 

 but peasant cultivators must be extremely poor in everything 

 that means money, though there may be no actual lack of the 

 necessaries of life. The chief taxable value in most tropical 

 countries being the exportable goods, the revenue of such a 

 country must be exceedingly small, there will be no money for 

 public works, the country will go back instead of forward, and 

 practically drop out of the progress of the race. We shall 

 return to this subject in Part III. 



