TROPICAL AGRICULTURE 



CHAP. I 



Proper 

 knowledge 

 of principles 

 necessary 

 for success. 



West Indian 

 planters 

 ought to be 

 successful. 



Plants grow. 



and must 

 have food. 



Food sup- 

 plied by 

 nature not 

 enough for 

 plants long 

 cultivated 

 in the same 

 soil. 



Object of 

 the book. 



effects, or is of greater and more decided influence." If, 

 then, so much depends on Agriculture, how necessary is it 

 for people to possess a proper knowledge of its princi- 

 ples ! Indeed, it is found that in places where cultivators 

 are acquainted with the art, the crops are large, the people 

 are richer, and there is more general prosperity than there 

 is in those countries where the principles of proper culti- 

 vation are not usually known. 



In the West Indies, a planter who is industrious and who 

 has a knowledge of Agriculture, need never despair of 

 becoming prosperous, for most of the soil is as good as can 

 be found anywhere else in the tropics. To the West Indian 

 Agriculturist, then, industry and knowledge promise success 

 and prosperity, and this fact must be borne in mind by all 

 those who intend to devote themselves to the honourable 

 occupation of cultivating the soil. 



All plants, whether small herbs or large trees, like animals, 

 grow ; that is to say, in their early life they are much smaller 

 than when they have grown up. Anything that grows must 

 have food. Animals obtain their food from plants or from 

 the animals that have lived on plants, but plants obtain their 

 food from the soil and from the atmosphere. In a wild state, 

 as will be explained fully later on, plants get in this way 

 enough food, upon which to live and thrive, but when they 

 are grown in large quantities in order that their produce 

 may be useful to man, the ordinary supply of food furnished 

 by the soil and the air is not enough for their continued 

 growth ; and this fact accounts for the failure of crops 

 when one kind of plant is grown for a number of years 

 on the same land, without any attempt being made to 

 supply the place of the food that the plant has taken up 

 from the soil. 



The main object of this book is to show how all this takes 

 place, and to explain how the plant-food may be given back 

 to the soil and made ready to be taken up by the roots that 

 are always in search of it. 



