98 
SECOND BOOK. 
kind of food, it is a good tiling to make a change, 
and to have some crop that will require but little 
of the sort of food which the other used plentifully. 
Or, such a crop as corn, whose roots search deep in 
the ground for food, might give place to a crop of 
cocoes or potatoes, which feed nearer the surface. 
10. Plants themselves do something to ensure that 
their young ones shall not live exactly on the spot 
where their own growth has been. The new plants 
are often started at a distance from their parent, at 
the end of underground stems or runners; or, as in 
bananas, by the suckers ‘ throwing ’ outwards, so 
that the ratoons grow away from the old plant. 
11. Again, seeds are scattered abroad by the wind 
or by animals; or, like those of the sand-box, are 
shot away by the bursting pod. 
12. In Jamaica, when the land is ‘sick’ or ex- 
hausted, it is the custom to let it become ‘ruinate’; 
that is, to give up tilling it for a few years, and to 
allow the weeds and bush to spring up. In this 
way the soil becomes enriched, as in the case of the 
forest land, so that, after its rest, it is fit to bear 
crops again. 
In the next chapter we shall learn how the land 
can be restored to fertility in a much quicker way, 
and even how it may be kept from exhaustion. 
