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INTRODUCTION 



The cultivation of fruit trees represents a more 

 advanced stage of civilization than the mere cultivation 

 of field crops, and could -be taken up only by a people 

 which has settled down and occupied the land for 

 good, and has given up definitely its original nomadic 

 habits. Half-savage tribes with ill-defined ideas of 

 property, and therefore with no notion of continuity, 

 may have their herds of domestic animals, and may 

 grow field crops or even such perennials, as the 

 banana, which are likely to yield an early and abundant 

 food, but have no fruit groves or orchards, and rely 

 chiefly on the produce of the trees of their native 

 forests. Hence the idea of property or continuity is 

 the first condition for the cultivation of fruit trees. 

 Land held in common, belongs to nobody, and it 

 requires an altruism altogether beyond human nature 

 for the individual to go to the trouble of planting 

 trees, the fruit of which others will gather who have 

 no connection with the planter and no natural claim 

 on the results of his labour. 



In the same manner the farmer who holds his 

 land on short lease, and our short lease is based 

 on a brief period of a four years course of rotation, 

 can have no right of property on the fruits of his 

 labour after the expiration of the term of lease, and 

 if he improves the land by planting fruit trees, his rent 

 is probably increased just when the trees are coming 

 to fruit so that he is either ousted out of his land by 

 some other farmer who is willing to pay more rent 

 for improvements made by others, or he has to submit 

 to pay the increase of rent demanded from him. In 



