224 TIMEHRI. 
either to themselves or their employers, to purchase 
or lease land in any particular spot suggested by others 
and not of their own free will and judgment. Not- 
withstanding the probability which the subsequent con- 
duct of the labourers would seem to throw roundthe 
contrary opinion, it might be affirmed that every prac- 
tical resident in tbe colony at the end of the Apprentice- 
ship was then and still satisfied that the attempt to sway 
the conduct of the labourer as to his home and the 
disposal of his labour would have proved worse than bs 
abortive, and that the subsequent time when he betook 
himself to the condition of a freehoider or tenant was 
the only time when such a change was praéticable, 
There was another branch of the agriculture of the 
colony which they could not omit to mention—the culti- 
vation of the plantain. It was with pain they had to 
notice the rapid spread of a disease which had hitherto 
baffled every attempt to arrest its progress. Whether 
it was attributable to some property in the soil becoming. 
exhausted, to blight, a grub, or some inherent gangrene 
or disease, remained yet a problem to be solved. The 
Society meant to take measures by the importation of 
suckers from Cuba or elsewhere, where the disease was 
unknown, to find out whether it came from any defeé& 
in the soil or degeneracy of the plant. In the meantime 
it had been suggested by Dr. BLAIR and others that — 
lime and sea shells with a dressing of salt, together with 
turning up of the soil, might check the spread of the 
disease, and they recommended these matters to the 
attention of growers. They could not too earnestly j 
impress upon all the good that might result to the colony — § 
at large by rendering it as independent of farinaceous 
£ 
