Miscellaneous. 



344 



[October, 1910. 



primitive Veddalis appear to have no 

 form of actual agricultxire, and are 

 rapidly disappearing. 



Very few people indeed remain at this 

 very early stage. The comparative 

 scarcity of the best kinds of food, in- 

 creased by the demand which would 

 naturally exist, would lead to the desire 

 to cultivate them, once the country was 

 sufficiently peaceful and settled to allow 

 of any systematic occupations being 

 carried on. Cultivation would ensure a 

 more regular supply. It would probbly 

 b^gin on a very small scale, a man grow- 

 ing a few plants in the immediate vicin- 

 ity of his house, but before very long 

 would be undertaken on a larger basis. 



The ground being covered with other 

 plants, it would obviously be necessary 

 to clear some of it, and get it compara- 

 tively free of weeds, to give the culti- 

 vated plant any chance of giving a crop. 

 In a savannah country or one simply 

 covered with grass, as is the case in 

 some parts of the tropics, simple tillage 

 of the land would suffice. But in most 

 of the tropics the land is covered with 

 forest, often of very formidable height, 

 and to get such land into a condition in 

 which anything could be grown upon it, 

 the system still so popular in such forest- 

 covered countries, and known in Ceylou 

 as chena, in India as jhuming, in Malaya 

 as ladang, and which may for the pre- 

 sent be briefly described as burning off 

 the forest, cultivating a crop or two on 

 the land thus cleared, and then aban- 

 doning it again, would almost inevitably 

 come in. 



The general principle upon which a 

 chena is conducted is simple. The land, 

 when chenaed for the first time, being 

 covered with tall forest, the trees which 

 are below a certain girth are felled, and 

 then during the dry season of the year- 

 are burnt, the fire also destroying the 

 undergrowth, and often killing the 

 larger trees which were left standing. 

 An open space of ground is thus ob- 

 tained, free of weeds, and this is sown, 

 after more or less — usually less — of culti- 

 vation, or rather of surface-scratching, 

 with the seeds of one or more of the most 

 useful things that have been found in 

 the course of the more or less involun- 

 tary study of the capabilities of the 

 local forest products and other orops. 

 Most often the crops are some of the 

 numerous cereals known in the tropics, 

 but cottou, gingelly and many others 

 are also grown. 



If, once the forest was thus cleared 

 from the soil, the latter were continu- 

 ously cultivated in various crops, agri- 

 culture, properly so called, would begin, 



on somewhat similar lines to that of 

 Europe or America. But this is by no 

 means the case. The primeval curse- 

 thorns also and thistles shall it bring 

 forth to thee — now begins to operate. 

 In the first season, the newly cleared 

 land, enriched by the ashes of the trees 

 that were growing upon it, yields a 

 large return, and one that must have 

 astonished the first man who com- 

 menced to cultivate in this manner. By 

 virtue of their superior supply of the 

 necessaries of life, his family would be- 

 come capitalists and Princes in Israel, 

 until before long they would be imitated 

 by the rest of the people. But the 

 chena cultivator as a rule is too lazy and 

 unenterprising to work hard himself, 

 and too poor to command a sufficient 

 supply of labour (were labour obtain- 

 able, which it usually is not) to properly 

 combat the weeds which rapidly spring 

 up ou his cleariug. His crop of the 

 second yearis consequently much reduced 

 by the growth of other plants among it, 

 and that of the third year is hardly 

 worth collecting, if indeed it can be sown 

 at all amongst the dense thicket of 

 weeds that covers the ground. In actual 

 practice at the present day, a chena 

 is rarely continued beyond the second 

 year, and is not infrequently abandoned 

 after the first. When left to itself the 

 land produces a dense covering of weeds 

 among which some of the more vigorous 

 woody forms gradually take the lead, so 

 that in the course of a few years it be- 

 comes covered witha low scrubby growth. 

 After a period varying from ten to fifty 

 years, according to the soil and the rain- 

 fall, the land is said by natives of 

 eastern countries to be once more worth 

 chena. By this time, they say, the soil 

 will have sufficiently recovered, and be 

 good enough to yield crops again. Actual 

 experiment in Ceylon shows, however, 

 that this is only a part of the truth. So 

 long as the land is nearly open, it is 

 covered by weeds capable of growing in 

 the open, aud which are consequently 

 hard to suppress so long as the land is 

 cultivated. But as the woody plants grow 

 up aud shade the ground more and more, 

 these weeds will be gradually suppressed, 

 and their place will be taken by the 

 weeds of shady ground, which will soon 

 disappear when the land is once more 

 opened for cultivation. At the same 

 time, if the land is left to lie fallow 

 during a period of years, the seeds of the 

 weeds of open ground will to a large 

 extent die, so that when the ground is 

 again opened, it will not immediately 

 become covered with such weed9. Chena 

 land in the north of Ceylon, which has 

 boon experimented upon for the last five 

 years, has shown itself capable of giving 



