AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OF THK 
5TUAIT5 
AND 
FEDERATED MALA/ STATES. 
No. 8.] MARCH, 1910. [Vol. IX 
TILLAGE OF SOIL 
In our last two numbers we published two articles on Tilled and 
Untilled Soils, which may be taken as the case for clean weeding. 
The authors show the action of the grass toxins upon trees, and 
the injury caused by- them. 
There is, however, the other side of the question to be considered, 
that is to say, the actual loss of the ground and risk to the trees due 
to the excessive denudation by rain on bare slopes. 
It must be remembered that the articles reprinted deal only with 
the conditions that obtained in England, and that the meteorological 
conditions there are entirely different from those of the tropical rain 
forest region where we have our plantations. 
The amount of denudation, except in a few exceptional spots, in 
England is comparatively small. That in the tropics excessively 
great, especially’ on cleared slopes. 
I have seen pineapple plants in the Singapore pinefields, planted 
originally on ground level not more than three years previously 
standing on pillars of earth a foot above the ground level as it then 
was, showing that the soil level had been cut down a foot all over 
this ground. Though this was perhaps an exceptional amount of 
denudation, observations on bare ground after a heavy rain will show 
that under better circumstances the loss of soil is extremely heavy on 
l^aths even if flat or nearly so, stones are seen pushed up so to say 
above the level, and roots of trees are constantly coming to the sur- 
face, all of which were buried previously some inches below the soil. 
On steep slopes it is worse. Near Balik Pulau, in Penang, and again 
on Bukit Mertajam, native planters were allowed to clear the forest for 
