GOLD COAST REPORT ON FORESTS. 33 



is one of the most difficult ones that we have to face. Given 

 sufficient time and a corresponding 1 increase of population 

 (which latter may be confidently expected under British rule), 

 there is not the slightest doubt that slowly but surely the 

 climatic factors will be altered for the worse. When a marked 

 change has been effected and the grasses have obtained the 

 upper hand, xerophilous conditions established, and the annual 

 fires characteristic of such regions are in full sway, then 

 good-bye to all those vegetable products the cultivation of 

 which is so dependent on the heavy rainfall and conditions 

 of growth usually associated with the luxuriant vegetation 

 of the moist tropics. Agriculture is of the very first importance 

 to man, but in practising it it is essential to employ only such 

 methods as ensure a continuance of the fertility of the >soil 

 and of the conditions regulating the growth of the particular 

 crops cultivated. To deviate from this ideal for any prolonged 

 period results in so altering the conditions as to preclude the 

 cultivation of the very crops that it is intended to maintain. 

 The system adopted by the natives of the country is to clear 

 the land of forest growth, cultivate it for one or two years, and 

 then abandon the area for a new one. where the process is 

 repeated, and so on till five to nine years have elapsed, when 

 a return is made to the plot first cultivated; the young forest 

 vegetation that has in the meanwhile sprung up on this land 

 is then cleared, crops planted, and the whole process repeated, 

 each area being in its turn placed under cultivation for one 

 or two years and allowed to lie fallow for from five to nine 

 years, as the case may be. If the people devoted their atten- 

 tions to the same group of areas the danger done would not 

 be so great, though the system would still be a very wastefiil 

 one compared with more recent methods of permanent and 

 intensive cultivation. But this is not all; a further compli- 

 cation ensues from the habit the natives have of continually 

 moving the sites of their farming villages as the soil gradually 

 gets exhausted, and of taking up entirely fresh areas, covered 

 with high forest, for cultivation. The result is that large 

 tracks of forest-covered country, quite out of proportion to 

 the inhabitants they have to support, become involved in the 

 general process of destruction, and this is brought about by 

 quite a small population. The irregular patchy condition of 

 the evergreen forests of tropical West Africa is due to these 

 causes; and, where the process has been continuous without 

 any long breaks intervening, they are becoming modified into 

 the mixed deciduous type which is the index of a drier climate, 

 and the forerunner, given a persistence of the same causes, of 

 the far worse conditions favoured by ;i more pronounced xero- 

 philous vegetation. 



What has hitherto saved the forests as a whole from almost 

 complete transformation into the last two types mentioned, 

 is the fact that in the past comparatively few areas have, on 

 account of internecine warfare, tribal invasions, disease, and 

 other causes tending to keep the density of population at a low 

 figure, been subjected to the continuous influence of the modifying 



123JR 



