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were never really successful with the plants cultivated by natives 

 nor were the natives ever really successful with those cultivated by 

 Europeans. Two classes of cultivation, however, dropped by Euro- 

 peans, were taken up by natives. Spices, abandoned by Europeans 

 in iS6o, on account of disease, are still cultivated in Penang and 

 Province Wellesley by natives. Pine-apples for tinning, originally 

 cultivated by Europeans, passed very soon into the hands of the 

 Chinese. 



The native cultivations always consisted of plants either of local 

 origin or which had long been cultivated often for other purposes 

 in the region. Native cultivators, practically Chinese only, are very 

 conservative, and seldom follow at all on the lines of European 

 cultivation or accept European ideas. An instance of this was the 

 attempt, about 18 years ago, to induce the Chinese vegetable gar- 

 deners to grow a better class of vegetables by supplying them with 

 European vegetable seed free. This was done by the Committee 

 of the Botanic Gardens in Singapore. It was a failure. The 

 Chinese either threw the seed away or neglected the plants. It was 

 not till years afterwards that they began to grow Tomatos, and that 

 there is reason to believe from Chinese seed, and still later they 

 commenced to grow Artichokes. Of course, I do not mean to say 

 there have never been natives who have followed European advice 

 to a certain extent. The first cultivator of Rubber was a Chinaman. 

 Mr. Tan Chay Yan. When Liberian Coffee was grown largely by 

 Europeans, Javanese and other natives had small and usually badly 

 cared-for plantations, but the bulk of the native cultivators stick to 

 the small cultivations which they understand. 



The changes in the forms of cultivations above referred to are 

 really our only substitute for the rotation of crops. The system of 

 cultivation in the tropics is to go on cultivating a plant on the same 

 ground till it is no longer remunerative, and then abandon the land, 

 or if necessary start another kind of crop. Fallowing land is un- 

 known, except in the form of throwing back the impoverished 

 ground on the hands of the Government, perhaps for many years, 

 till some one takes it into his head to use it again. Immense areas 

 of land were thus spoilt by the Gambir, Pepper and Tapioca plan- 

 ters, and a good deal after a few years' use has never been touched 

 again for fifty years or longer. 



Though most of the land in the Colony which was at one time 

 cultivated and abandoned has never been utilised a second time 

 (for as long as a native planter could lease a scrap of virgin forest 

 he would never apply for a piece of even secondary jungle), now 

 that most of the woodland anywhere near the towns has been des- 

 troyed, the previously rejected abandoned land is in many places 

 coming again into cultivation. The old Chasseriau Estate in Singa- 

 pore is one of the few pieces of land which has really had a regular 

 rotation of crops on it. It began with Tapioca, given up on a fall 

 of prices, then came Cotton, a failure, Coffee which practically failed,, 

 then in parts Indigo, Ginger, Chillies and other minor cultivations, 

 and finally is now mostly under Pineapples, It was probably under 



