AN AGRICULTURAL POINT OF VIEW 267 



whilst they are young. They are very sensitive to weeds 

 at this stage, and it is essential that they should be dis- 

 encumbered of them if they are to play their part later on 

 of smothering plants in their turn. Through neglecting 

 to hoe a plantation of peas in the first months of its growth, 

 one often finds a field where this plant, by its irregular 

 growth, has not accomplished the object for which it was 

 sown . 



In estimating the advantages of a rotation of Legu- 

 minosas, plants which the early planters called couver- 

 tures (covering plants), we should not merely regard the 

 enrichment of the soil as the sole effect. Indeed, we often 

 find in the popular nomenclature of planters a definition of 

 facts or of things so exact as to astonish us. In climates 

 such as ours the violent rains, unparalleled in Europe, and 

 the intense heat of the sun, are neither of them favourable 

 to the soil, a medium which, as recent scientific agricultural 

 research has shown, is full of micro-organisms which modify 

 the condition of the arabie layer. It is, therefore, a good 

 thing at the commencement of the winter season to interpose 

 between earth and sky a sort of insulator, a kind of blanket, 

 or, as our ancestors called it, converture. In this way the 

 rain water is unable to block up the interstices between 

 the particles of earth and to cause the soil surface to congeal, 

 thereby retarding the development of the young plants. We 

 ourselves have remarked that after a few days of heavy rain 

 the fields turn pale and yellow. M. Joseph Desbassyns 

 observed the same thing. In fact, among his instructions 

 for the cultivation of the sugar-cane we read the following : — 



" After a downpour the ground should be hoed at 

 once. I have noticed that after heavy rains which have 

 beaten down the soil the second crop of canes turns yellow 

 if a turn with the hoe is not given immediatelv, even though 

 the field has been hoed just previously." 



That is one of the reasons for advocating the cultivation 

 of cowpeas or peas between rows of canes. 



