86 MALAY LAND TENURE. 



ing cultivation, ensuring thereby a reasonable revenue to the 

 State. In the Straits Settlements, on the other hand, where 

 the necessity of making every cultivator take out a lease seems 

 to have been the whole and sole guiding principle of the Land 

 Office, the ladang or luima system has never been recognised 

 and regulated. It is still practised, nevertheless, in parts of 

 Malacca at a loss of revenue to the Colon)^. In Native States 

 on the Peninsula it is, of course, common. 



The following remarks on the temporary cultivation of hill- 

 farms by certain tribes in India and Burma are extracted from 

 Baden-Powell's •Manual of the Land Revenue Systems and 

 Land Tenures of British India (1882), p. 102 :— 



" Shifting Cultivation. 



" An account, however elementary, of Indian land tenures, 

 " would be incomplete without some notice of a customary hold- 

 a ing of jungle land which is widely prevalent in parts of India, 

 " but which is of such a nature that it is very doubtful whether 

 " the term ' land-tenure ' can with propriety be applied to it. 

 " I allude to the practice of temporary or shifting cultivation of 

 "patches of forest, which has in some districts proved an obsta- 

 u cle, or at least a source of difficulty in the way of making 

 " arrangements for the preservation of wooded tracts as forest 

 " estates, a work which modern science recognises as essen- 

 " tial for almost any country, and especially a great continent 

 " like India with its climatic changes and seasons of drought of 

 " such frequent recurrence." 



" In the jungle-clad hill country on the east and north of 

 " Bengal, in the Ghats of the eastern and western coasts of the 

 " peninsula, in the inland hill ranges of the Central Provinces 

 " and Southern India, there are aboriginal tribes who live by 

 " clearing patches of the jungle, and taking a crop or two off 

 " the virgin soil, after which the tract is left to grow up again 

 " while a new one is attacked. 



" This method of cultivation seems to be instinctive to all 

 "tribes inhabiting such districts. It seems to be the natural 

 " and obvious method of dealing with a country so situated. 



" The details of the custom are of course various, and the 

 " names are legion. The most widespread names, however, are 



