DISCOVERY 



105 



cola from the West African forests ; shea butter from 

 the hinterland of Nigeria and the Gold Coast, and so 

 forth. And to these may be added many other plants 

 only recently brought together in orderly plantations : 

 pepper, cacao, cocaine, coffee, quinine. There is, in 

 fact, a constant striving, even in these latter days of 

 progress, to emulate the work of the primitive savage, 

 who brought a few seeds and planted them- near his 

 chosen place of abode. 



The range of ancient agriculture in the tropics, 

 which is the heart of the study, may best be learnt 

 by constructing a map of the world, showing the em- 

 ployments of mankind in the fifteenth century, the 

 age when we began to appreciate how big the world 

 was. The turning-point coincides with the finding of 

 the Cape route to the Indies and our discovery that a 

 great western continent existed. In the New World 

 thus discovered, little of settled agriculture e.xisted 

 beyond the domain, on the western coasts, of the Aztecs 

 and Incas, whose cultivation is unfortunately lost, 

 but to whom we are indebted for the best varieties 

 of cotton, tobacco, pineapples, maize, and other crops. 

 The rest of the Americas, largely covered by dense 

 forests, was ranged by warlike peoples who devoted 

 themselves to hunting and fishing. In Africa, the 

 great central plateau was covered from north to south 

 by wandering tribes, often at war with each other, 

 and little settled agriculture can be traced but in a 

 few isolated tracts, always excepting the extreme north, 

 cut off by impassable deserts, the Mechterranean coast 

 from Egypt to Morocco. In Oceania, with its exu- 

 berant vegetation, little more was needed by the 

 inhabitants than to put out their hands and gather the 

 fruits of the earth. But in Asia, with its teeming 

 populations, a very different state of things existed. 

 We know that, from remote times, thousands of years 

 before the Christian era, agriculture was a valued art, 

 and, to emphasise this, the five sacred crops, rice, wheat, 

 barley, millet, and beans, were annually planted with 

 much ceremony by the Emperor and his courtiers. 

 In India, cotton and sugar-cane were cultivated also 

 in remote antiquity, although the earliest existing 

 references are only 800 years B.C. And doubtless 

 similar circumstances prevailed throughout the south- 

 eastern portion of the continent and the adjacent 

 larger islands. The study of the vast accumulated 

 agricultural lore in these tracts is a life's work, and 

 forms the basis of tropical. agriculture of to-day. 



On an entirely different plane is our third division, 

 the agriculture responsible for our coffee, tea, cacao, 

 rubber, and to a less extent sugar, cotton, and spices, 

 broadly included under the title of " planters' pro- 

 ducts." Most of these owe their increase to the in- 

 vasion of tropical countries by inhabitants of temperate 

 regions, bringing with them their energy and capital, 



and capable of effects quite impossible to the local 

 races. Although cotton, sugar-cane, cacao, and 

 rubber are produced at low elevations, the settlers 

 naturally congregated together, chiefly in the more 

 elevated tracts, where the population was scanty and 

 the climate cool and suited to their needs. And this 

 scantiness of population made it necessary to intro- 

 duce labour from the excess in the plains. Cultivation 

 in these regions is of an entirely different nature from 

 that in the plains, and its principles have been largely 

 built up on the unfortunate experience of pioneers : 

 the planters are now laboriously remedying the errors 

 of the past, and fighting the hordes of pests and diseases 

 introduced by inefficient agricultural methods. Almost 

 all of the plants in this tract are perennials, often shrubs 

 or even trees, which fact, together with the irregular 

 contour of the land, rules out the plough, and cultiva- 

 tion, therefore, depends on hand labour. The planters 

 have, accordingly, introduced the spade and fork, 

 unknown in the plains. 



Naturally, no general rules can be laid down for the 

 treatment of soil in such different conditions, and the 

 conditions in the separate staples in each class differ 

 quite as widely among themselves. The methods 

 of cultivation of rice, which is a water plant, and the 

 millets, which will thrive on the minimum of rainfall, 

 differ as the poles ; so do the intensive field work in 

 the cane-fields and the extensive among the various 

 fibre plants. The only way is to take the crops and 

 countries one by one, recognising the fact that the study 

 of tropical agriculture is limitless. A whole life may 

 be spent in the study of cotton or sugar or rubber 

 with gaps still left in one's knowledge. But the study, 

 if disheartening, is full of interest, and well worthy of 

 a place in the curricula of our schools, where it is gradu- 

 ally forcing its way to recognition. 



An Inlroduclion to Siring Figures. An Amusement for 

 Everybody. Bv W. W. Rouse B.\ll. (Heffer, 



2S.) 



Mr. Rouse Ball's book will be a joy to all who are 

 interested in making figures out of a piece of string with 

 the hands. He has collected all the best figures, describes 

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 will be especially suitable for whiling away many a dull 

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The Backward Peoples and our Relations with Them. 

 By Sir H.\rry Johnston. (Oxford University 

 Press, 2S. 6d.) 



