3oo 
were never really successful with the plants cultivated by natives 
nor were the natives ever really successful with those cultivated by 
Europeans, Two classes of cultivation, however, dropped by Euro- 
peans, were taken up by natives. Spices, abandoned by Europeans 
in i860, on account of disease, are still cultivated in Penang and 
Province Wellesley by natives. Pine-apples for tinning, originally 
cultivated by Europeans, passed very soon into the hands of the 
Chinese. 
The native cultivations always consisted of plants either of local 
origin or which had long been cultivated often for other purposes 
in the region. Native cultivators, practically Chinese only, are very 
conservative, and seldom follow at all on the lines of European 
cultivation or accept European ideas. An instance of this was the 
attempt, about 18 years ago, to induce the Chinese vegetable gar- 
deners to grow a better class of vegetables by supplying them with 
European vegetable seed free. This was done by the Committee 
of the Botanic Gardens in Singapore. It was a failure. The 
Chinese either threw the seed away or neglected the plants. It was 
not till years afterwards that they began to grow Tomatos, and that 
there is reason to believe from Chinese seed, and still later they 
commenced to grow Artichokes. Of course, I do not mean to say 
there have never been natives who have followed European advice 
to a certain extent. The first cultivator of Rubber was a Chinaman. 
Mr. Tan ChAY Yan. When Liberian Coffee was grown largely by 
Europeans, Javanese and other natives had small and usually badly 
cared-for plantations, but the bulk of the native cultivators stick to 
the small cultivations which they understand. 
The changes in the forms of cultivations above referred to are 
really our only substitute tor the rotation of crops. The system of 
cultivation in the tropics is to go on* cultivating a plant on the same 
ground till it is no longer remunerative, and then abandon the land, 
or if necessary start another kind of c r op. Fallowing land is un- 
known, except, in the form of throwing back the impoverished 
ground on the hands of the Government, perhaps for many years, 
till some one takes it into his head tcf use it again. Immense areas 
of land were thus spoilt by the Gambir, Pepper and Tapioca plan- 
ters, and a good deal after a few years’ use has never been touched 
again for fifty years or longer. 
Though most of the land in the Colony which was at one time 
cultivated and abandoned has never been utilised a second time 
(for as long as a native planter could lease a scrap of virgin forest 
he would never apply for a piece of even secondary jungle), now 
that most of the woodland anywhere near the towns has been des- 
troyed, the previously rejected abandoned land is in many places 
coming again into cultivation. The old Chasseriau Estate in Singa- 
pore is one of the few pieces of land which has really had a regular 
rotation of crops on it. It began with Tapioca, given up on a fall 
of prices, then came Cotton, a failure, Coffee which practically failed, 
then in parts Indigo, Ginger, Chillies and other minor cultivations, 
and finally is now mostly under Pineapples. It was probably under 
