116 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
it is considered by the planters of the utmost import- 
ance to weed the ground completely free of all herbace- 
ous and other plants, and this is one of the heaviest 
expenses in cultivation. It may be doubted whether 
this method of cultivation can pay at all, and whether, 
on the other hand, it is not extremely injurious to the 
plants. In Banda no such weeding is done. 
Here is Dr. Oxley’s description of a nutmeg estate 
in Banda: — 
There being no obstruction, as I have already observed, from 
underwood, and the lowest branches of the nutmeg trees being 
far above the level of vision, you can walk about with perfect 
freedom and see distinctly for a considerable distance, according 
to the undulating nature of the ground. Under your feet is a 
carpet formed of short grass, mosses, ferns, or soft lycopodiums. 
Photographs in Warburg’s Mushatnuss show ex- 
actly the same thing. The ground is covered with cool, 
soft undergrowth, grass and ferns, and resembles an 
English wood in summer. What a contrast is this to 
the hot, dry, exposed soils of the Penang and Province 
Wellesley hills. Personally, I have little doubt that 
the habit of scraping every scrap of herbaceous plants 
from beneath the trees in an estate of any tropical tree 
goes far to account for many failures of crops. No 
trees grow thus in nature, and he would be considered 
insane who removed all the turf from his apple orchard, 
and left the bare exposed soil. But absurd as this 
would be in Europe, it is still worse in the tropics. 
The denudation of the soil by the violent tropical 
showers, washing off all the humus, and soaking out 
all the soluble food salts of the soil, followed by a 
blaze of heat which cracks the ground for some depth, 
tearing through all the small roots in the line of the 
cracks, and which dries up the water in and round the 
roots, cannot but be very injurious to any plant. 
The nutmeg roots grow very high, and quite near 
the surface, at least in the Malay Peninsula. Portions 
of the roots may even be seen projecting from the 
ground, and these are sometimes exposed to a tempera- 
