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TheJMalay has a sound practice of taking liis seed-rice from the 
best part of the field : but scientific selection by pure-line cultures 
would do much more for the crops. 
I have brought into view selection last : and 1 think that in point 
of time it comes last as a means of improving the prospect on 
growing rice. I think, hut I may be wrong, that the first results 
should come from the work of ihe agricultural engineer, and 
administrative measures taken to ensure protection against pests, not 
animals only directly injurious but the worse evil — loss of plough- 
cattle by disease. As to the work of the agricultural engineer, I 
should like to refer to that practice in Java, whereby rice land is let 
out for sugar growing, not to recommend its use here, but to call 
attention to the improved irrigation and working of the soil which 
the sugar mills apply to their crop and which exercises a beneficial 
influence upon the rice crop following the cane. 
In the Philippine Islands the knot of rice improvement has been 
cut by tariff protection. 
Maize. 
Maize appears to demand the place of second cereal for the 
Malay Peninsula : and a good sign for its adoption here is that Its 
area has bad considerable extension lately in Java, where it has 
become an article of export. Before maize reached Africa, sorghum 
was the staple crop of the south, the bulrush -millet that of the 
sub-tropics, and ragi that of the tropics themselves. Maize has 
shown a tendency to oust them all. It does not show the same 
tendency to oust rice, where that crop predominates, and I think 
the reason of this to be that the housewife must cook maize for 
twice as long as rice ; and where she is used to boiling rice, given 
maize, she makes the household ill from serving up half cooked 
porridge. When maize shall assert itself in India, it will be by 
spreading down from the bills of the poor tribes who eat millet or 
from the wheat-eating north-west. If its use ean be spread in the 
Malay Peninsula, it might be forwarded through the planters 
encouraging it. 
Maize is a very wide-spread crop, and gives races suitable to 
quite dissimilar climatic conditions. The races fall into groups, of 
which the sugar-maizes are the most toothsome and are used as a 
vegetable ; the flint-maizes are good for storing, and the soft maizes 
are not. Various races have been introduced from time to time into 
the Peninsula aud lost sight of again, because the market did not 
exist for them : the two or three which we have left, persist as 
garden plants. It is hard to find what races have been tried. 
The crcp is not on the ground for long. Some races take only 
two and a half months to mature, others take three, and up to or 
beyond four mouths. With a crop of such short duration, it is not 
difficult to find a season, having the last month relatively dry, 
