The World's Commercial Products 



the degree to which he is dependent 

 on the herbs of the field for his 

 support. The dweller in cities is 

 accustomed to find everything pro- 

 vided for him in a finished condition, 

 and he accepts it without realising 

 whence it came or how it was 

 procured. This is easily seen in the 

 case of a child spending his early 

 years in a town. It comes to him as a 

 revelation that his daily bread has 

 any connection with the corn he has 

 perhaps seen in a field during a 

 holiday, that sugar and his favourite 

 sweetstuffs are derived from the 

 sugar cane grown in the tropics, or 

 from the more familiar beet-root, 

 that his rubber ball is the produce 

 of a forest tree, and that his clothes, 

 at any rate in part, have also been 

 gathered in the field. To the 

 country child things are different. 

 He lives in touch with Nature, and 

 the seasons for sowing and harvesting 

 are important events in his daily 

 life. Still more so is this the case 

 with primitive people. The native 

 races of the East and the West 

 Indies, Africa, and elsewhere are directly dependent on the soil for their livelihood. A bad 

 season makes itself felt at once by diminishing the available food, whilst a plenteous harvest 

 means a full table. We have only to go back a comparatively few years to find the same 

 state of affairs the universal rule in this country, and in many parts it is still so at the 

 present day. 



Primitive man lived directly on the wild plants he found in his native country, and from 

 these also he made his few clothes, his house, his weapons, his canoes, and the other 

 necessaries of his simple life, supplementing the plant products from the animal and mineral 

 worlds. At a very early stage man took the important step of growing for himself the 

 plants he most needed, and agriculture, or the tilling of the soil, is perhaps the most ancient 

 occupation of mankind. The natives on the West Coast of Africa afford an example of the 

 practice of simple agriculture. A tribe settles in some locality which attracts it for one 

 reason or another, such as accessibility of water, fertile soil, abundance of oil palms, or other 

 important wild plants, and security from enemies. An area is cleared by cutting down 

 and burning everything, except a few trees so large as to defy man's efforts, and others 

 which it is desired to retain. On the land so cleared crops are raised. Indian corn, Guinea 

 corn, cassava, yams, sweet potatoes, bananas, ground or monkey nuts, various peas and beans, 

 and perhaps some cotton are planted, and on these, supplemented by the products of wild 

 plants and animals from the bush, the tribe lives in comfort. Agriculture, as we understand 

 the term, is not practised, and it is found that the soil is soon exhausted. This is of no 

 serious consequence where there is far more land available than is required, and even to 

 move the village or town to a new place is a task entailing no great labour, although in 

 most cases it is sufficient to abandon one " farm " and to clear and cultivate another. 



HARVESTING PADDY IN CEYLON 



