CHAPTER XIII 

 THE FOREST IN RELATION TO AGRICULTURE 



The intimate and very important connection between Agriculture 

 and Forestry is not at all widely recognized, so it is desirable to bring 

 out more fully exactly how the one reacts on the other : the value 

 of forests from the climatic point of view to agriculture, the economic 

 effects on it, as well as the population connected with it. 



In all the older civilized countries, such as France, England and 

 Russia, and the United States and Canada of the newer ones, definite 

 and almost exactly fixed quantities of land are used for agricultural 

 purposes on the one hand and for Forestry on the other. 



In the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria, however, 

 with the exception of about 1,500 square miles of forest reserves 

 and certain native land planted with rubber or cocoa, all the land 

 (even when covered with finest mahogany forests) is liable to be farmed 

 for a time and then abandoned for another piece of forest-land under 

 the system of shifting cultivation. In jjractice, this means that every 

 year thousands of square miles of forest are ruthlessly cut down, in 

 order that the land may be used for agricultural crops, for one, two, 

 or at the most three years' crops. In the drier parts of the countries 

 named, through such forests as exist, grass-fires annually burn, and 

 destroy many trees in order to provide poor grazing for herds of the 

 nomads' cattle. 



It might be argued that in the comparatively damp and hot 

 climate which attains in a great part of the Gambia, Sierra Leone, 

 the Gold Coast and Nigeria, which are also to some extent still 

 covered with forest, it would be most advantageous to clear as much 

 land as possible. This, however, is a delusion resting on false im- 

 pressions, notably that the countries named are so much covered 

 with thick forest. In most places this so-called " forest " is in reality 

 an almost worthless secondary growth, consisting chiefly of umbrella 

 trees (Musanga Smithii), soft-wooded Hannoa, creepers, grass, with 

 isolated half-burnt or decayed trees from the original forest. Again, 

 too, this system of clearing new land is quite haphazard, so that, 

 after the first crop has been taken off, the land may be found 

 to be too poor to be planted again ; the natives then abandon 

 it. In some places, chiefly in the Benin and Oban districts, they even 



