116 SPICES 



CHAP. 



it is considered by the planters of the utmost import- 

 ance to weed the ground completely free of all herbace- 

 ous and other plants, and this is one of the heaviest 

 expenses in cultivation. It may be doubted whether 

 this method of cultivation can pay at all, and whether, 

 on the other hand, it is not extremely injurious to the 

 plants. In Banda no such weeding is done. 



Here is Dr. Oxley's description of a nutmeg estate 

 in Banda : 



There being no obstruction, as I have already observed, from 

 underwood, and the lowest branches of the nutmeg trees being 

 far above the level of vision, you can walk about with perfect 

 freedom and see distinctly for a considerable distance, according 

 to the undulating nature of the ground. Under your feet is a 

 carpet formed of short grass, mosses, ferns, or soft lycopodiums. 



Photographs in Warburg's Muskatnuss show ex- 

 actly the same thing. The ground is covered with cool, 

 soft undergrowth, grass and ferns, and resembles an 

 English wood in summer. What a contrast is this to 

 the hot, dry, exposed soils of the Penang and Province 

 Wellesley hills. Personally, I have little doubt that 

 the habit of scraping every scrap of herbaceous plants 

 from beneath the trees in an estate of any tropical tree 

 goes far to account for many failures of crops. No 

 trees grow thus in nature, and he would be considered 

 insane who removed all the turf from his apple orchard, 

 and left the bare exposed soil. But absurd as this 

 would be in Europe, it is still worse in the tropics. 

 The denudation of the soil by the violent tropical 

 showers, washing off all the humus, and soaking out 

 all the soluble food salts of the soil, followed by a 

 blaze of heat which cracks the ground for some depth, 

 tearing through all the small roots in the line of the 

 cracks, and which dries up the water in and round the 

 roots, cannot but be very injurious to any plant. 



The nutmeg roots grow very high, and quite near 

 the surface, at least in the Malay Peninsula. Portions 

 of the roots may even be seen projecting from the 

 ground, and these are sometimes exposed to a tempera- 



