NUTMEGS AND MACE 
III 
117 
ture of 110°, and even higher. This cannot be beneficial 
to the growth of the plant. 
It is, however, advisable in any case to keep the 
ground clear of weeds around the young plants, and to 
see that climbers do not strangle them, and that they 
get sufficient light. Hart recommends weeding up to 
the twentieth year, and after that considers it unneces- 
sary. A good deal has been written, of late, as to the 
effects of the poisons excreted by grass roots (the root- 
toxins) on other plants grown in the same soil. A 
good deal more research is wanted in this direction, but 
even if the root-toxins did delay the growth or injure 
the tree to some extent, the injury caused by rain- wash 
and denudation of the soil, and exposure of the young 
roots to the excessive heat of the sun, cannot be ignored, 
and the question resolves itself into the choice of two 
evils. 
If clean weeding is practised the weeds should not 
be removed from the ground, as that entails a loss of 
potash, sodium, and nitrogen, which will have to be 
replaced in the form of manure. They should be rotted 
down in a pit, with dead leaves, sticks, etc., and re- 
applied to the tree as a mulch, or they may be burnt 
and the ash utilised. 
Manuring . — In 1860, when the great collapse of the 
nutmeg plantations occurred in the Straits Settlements, 
the cause of the disease was attributed by Mr. Jose 
d’ Almeida, in Collingwood’s article, to over-manuring. 
The trees were said to have been unnaturally forced by 
digging trenches too closely around the spongioles {i.e. 
the young root-ends), and by too rich and long continued 
manuring, by which heavy crops had been obtained, 
but which at last exhausted the trees. To a certain 
extent this was corroborated by the fact that in Penang, 
where the planters were rich and could afford much 
manure, the destruction when the disease came was 
more complete than in the plantations of the poorer 
owners in Malacca. 
This, however, had probably little to do with the 
