76 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
crops than on their pigs and fowls. Side by side with 
them live tribes that neither keep animals nor farm but 
are pure hunters. In fact, the breeding of animals is 
so universal an accompaniment of agriculture, and so 
distinctly secondary to it throughout Oceania, that 
there is hardly any conclusion possible but that it was 
developed as a side-product of agriculture and probably 
subsequently to the latter. 
The problem therefore shifts. from the general but 
erroneous theory, to the question of how the transition 
from a hunting to a farming life was accomplished in the 
Philippines and East Indies. In the nature of the case, 
such a transition happens much more easily in the fertile 
tropics than in more temperate latitudes. The bread- 
fruit tree, the banana, the coconut palm, to take only a 
few examples, require only the slightest attention to 
make them yield useful food for many years. For other 
crops, such as the sweet potato, which is grown so 
abundantly in the Philippines, the procedure is little 
more difficult. All that plants of this type need to 
produce a bountiful crop is a clearing to give them a 
start, and some protection against the natural growths 
that threaten to choke them out of existence. The many 
difficulties that confronted and must often have dis- 
couraged the incipient agriculturist in more northern 
latitudes are therefore scarcely present in the tropics. 
All that is required to convert even quite uncivilized 
tribes from hunters to farmers is the realization of 
the desirability of greater steadiness of food supply. 
This desirability must become a necessity as soon as the 
population attains density, as has obviously often 
happened on the comparatively small areas of an 
archipelago. 
If then agriculture can be slid into, as it were, by 
even lowly tribes, it is hopeless to look at the present 

