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NUTMEGS AND MACE 
113 
the same time to allow the plant sufficient light, and 
the advantages of light rain, and dew. The shade can 
be removed in ten days or a fortnight at latest, or before 
this if the plant has pushed up its shoots, so as to touch 
the covering. 
The time for planting should be by preference the 
beginning of the rainy season in countries where the 
seasons are distinct. Planting in the dry season is not 
giving the plant a fair chance, and can only be success- 
ful by a regular system of watering every evening. 
Watering is sometimes necessary for the young 
plants for the first few days after transplanting, but 
seldom unless the weather proves very dry. 
In planting under shade, unless the weather is ex- 
ceptionally hot, and by chance the plants are too much 
exposed, additional shading is of course not required, 
nor indeed is watering. But the planter, visiting the 
seedlings on the second or third day, will be able to 
judge by their appearance as to whether additional 
shade or water is required. 
Shading . — The nutmeg trees in Banda are cultivated 
in alleys beneath big canary-nut trees {Canarium edule), 
but the trees in the Penang and Province Wellesley 
plantations, and in fact all over the Malay Peninsula, 
were grown quite in the open, without any shading at 
all. Indeed, on the steep slopes of the Penang hills, 
it would be difficult to shade them in any way. The 
hills here are terraced, and the terraces supported with 
granite boulders, and there is little room for shading. 
It is to this want of shade that Wallace and others, 
who have seen the Banda trees, attribute the collapse 
of the industry in Singapore, and to a large extent in 
Penang, in 1860. This, I do not think was directly 
the cause, which is explained under the account of pests, 
but I think it is clear that trees do grow better for 
shading, to a certain extent. The nutmeg is not a tree 
of open country, but a jungle tree, and it is certainly 
unnatural for it to grow in bare ground with no shade. 
The heat on the Penang and Province Wellesley hills 
I 
