8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



best, so that with the advent of civilised trade the old native hoe, axe 

 and knife were soon superseded by the manufactured articles from 

 British and American forges. 



With the hoe and the axe the native does all his agriculture. 

 He has the virgin forest before him from which to choose, for there 

 is no private ownership of land in native law, and the chiefs country 

 is open to the chiefs people. But once a man has fixed on a piece of 

 ground and marked it off for his own by tying the grass into tufts or 

 placing a stone in the fork of a tree to mark the boundary, the ground 

 becomes his till he vacate it or sell his rights to another. The 

 system of agriculture is destructive in the extreme. A piece of virgin 

 forest is felled and the timber burned on the spot. The ashes are 

 gathered into heaps and covered with a thin layer of soil. On the 

 fall of the early rains the seed is planted in these heaps, and in a few 

 days germinates. It is twice hoed before it is ready to be reaped, 

 and when reaped the stalks are left on the ground to be burned for 

 next year's manure. But every year a new piece of forest is felled 

 and burned, and added to the old garden. After three or four years' 

 cultivation the soil is exhausted and is abandoned to lie fallow for 

 years. In this way vast tracts of land in Central Africa are deforested, 

 and in consequence the rainfall is yearly decreasing. With this decrease 

 the level of the great lakes and rivers is slowly falling. Within the 

 last thirty years the level of Lake Nyasa has fallen eleven feet, and 

 there are watermarks on the rocks which show it once stood at a still 

 higher level. 



The chief food-crops are maize, kaffir corn, rice and beans. 

 Pumpkins, ground nuts, and cucumbers are also grown in their season, 

 but the staple crops are those I have mentioned. When the crop is 

 reaped by cutting the heads off the stalks, it is stored in large bins 

 made of plaited strips of bamboo and thatched over with grass. Part 

 is stored on a shelf in the roof of the hut where it is protected from 

 the moths and weevils by the smoke. This is used for seed in the 

 next year's sowing. As required the grain is taken from the store, 

 and threshed by beating with a stick, while the maize is separated 



