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TheJMalay has a sound practice of taking his seed-rice from the 

 best part of the field : but scientific selection by pure-line cultures 

 would do much more for the crops. 



I have brought into view selection last : and I think that in point 

 of time it comes last as a means of improving the prospect on 

 growing rice. I think, but I may be wrong, that the first results 

 should come from the work of the agricultural engineer, and 

 administrative measures taken to ensure protection against pests, not 

 animals only directly injurious but the worse evil— loss of plough- 

 cattle by disease. As to the work of the agricultural engineer, I 

 should like to refer to that practice in Java, whereby rice land is let 

 out for sugar growing, not to recommend its use here, but to call 

 attention to the improved irrigation and working of the soil which 

 the sugar mills apply to their crop and which exercises a beneficial 

 influence upon the rice crop following the cane. 



In the Philippine Islands the knot of rice improvement has been 

 cut by tariff protection. 



Maize. 

 Maize appeal's to demand the place of second cereal for the 

 Malay Peninsula : and a good sign for its adoption here is that its 

 ax'ea lias had considerable extension lately in Java, where it has 

 become an article of export. Before maize reached Africa, sorghum 

 was the staple crop of the south, the bulrush-millet that of the 

 sub-tropics, and ragi that of the tropics themselves. Maize has 

 shown a tendency to oust them all. It does not show the same 

 tendency to oust rice, where that crop predominates, and I think 

 the reason of this to be that the housewife must cook maize for 

 twice as long as rice ; and whei'e she is used to boiling rice, given 

 maize, she makes the household ill from serving up half cooked 

 porridge. When maize shall assert itself in India, it will be by 

 spreading down from the hills of the poor tribes who eat millet or 

 from the wheat-eating north-west. If its use can be spread in the 

 Malay Peninsula, it might be forwarded through the planters 

 encouraging it. 



Maize is a very wide-spread crop, and gives races suitable to 

 quite dissimilar climatic conditions. The" races fall into groups, of 

 which the sugar-maizes are the most toothsome and are used as a 

 vegetable : the flint-maizes are good for storing, and the soft maizes 

 are not. Various races liave been introduced from time to time into 

 the Peninsula and lost sight of again, because the market did not 

 exist for them : the two or three which we have left, persist as 

 garden plants. It is hard to find what races have been tried. 



The crop is not on the ground for long. Some races take only 

 two and a half months to mature, others take three, and up to or 

 beyond four months. With a crop of such short duration, it is not 

 difficult to find a season, having the last month relatively dry, 



