CHAPTER XIV 



LALANG LAND 



THE difficulty of getting rid of lalang was formerly esteemed 

 so great that most planters avoided a stretch of good 

 country with lalang, preferring to clear and plant up hilly 

 land under jungle rather than attempt to clear the best lay 

 of flat country of the lalang growing luxuriantly thereon. Of 

 recent years quite a change of sentiment has set in. 



Experience has shown that rubber planted in lalang land is 

 almost entirely free from the Fomes which often works such 

 disaster on freshly-cleared jungle lands. White ants, too, do 

 not infest lalang land, as there is no decayed timber on which 

 they can feed. 



If the land is flat it can often be cleared of lalang in an 

 economical manner by means of repeated ploughings, and the 

 flat land has the great additional merit of not being subject to 

 wash of surface soil. Leading visiting agents in the East who 

 have superintended the planting-up of thousands of acres of 

 rubber have informed me that if they were choosing a piece 

 of land for themselves to plant up with rubber it would be 

 flat lalang land. Personally, I know of no land so good for 

 planting up with rubber as a fair extent of flat lalang land. 



Once lalang has been entirely, or nearly entirely, extirpated, 

 one coolie ought to be able to keep 3 acres in a good, clean- 

 weeded condition. Thus, for the purposes of weeding 900 acres, 

 300 coolies would be a fair allowance. 



Next in my estimation would come land formerly planted 

 with tobacco. Here, as a rule, there is very little heavy jungle, 

 and, consequently, the planter has but little trouble with Fomes. 

 With a piece of land of this description one also reaps the benefit 

 of the drains already excavated by the former tobacco planter, 

 and also finds that the estate has been well roaded throughout. 

 These are no small advantages. 



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