Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/147

Rh valuable by-products are all lost, while rice threshed by steam power is ready to go to the cleaning mill at once, and 20 per cent of the rough rice is saved in bran and polish, which make excellent cattle food. The rice crop being thus quickly disposed of, the farmer and his laborers have time to put in other crops. Several steam threshers have been bought by Filipino farmers.

Experiments in growing Indian corn have been successful. A crop may be matured in less than three months. The meal, pound for pound, is more nutritious than rice. The average rice crop, which requires six months to grow, does not yield more than 750 pounds of cleaned rice per acre, while the average corn crop is 15 bushels per acre, which is more than equivalent in food value to 750 pounds of cleaned rice. It is apparent, therefore, that the successful stimulation of corn production will greatly increase the available food supply.

Attempts are being made to use the castor bean, which grows all over the islands. Little use heretofore has been made of its fruit, while much castor oil is imported at a high price. Press cake obtained from this bean is worth approximately $20 gold per ton for fertilizer.

The stimulation of cocoanut production, at present a source of considerable wealth to the Philippines, has been begun. The trees thrive on ground which is worthless for other purposes. They require comparatively little care, and when grown in large numbers are not often seriously injured by the attacks of insects or by unfavorable climatic conditions other than long-continued drouth. At present nuts are, as a rule, planted haphazard, without regard to the productivity of the trees from which they come. Plantations are cultivated little, if at all. Fruit is often harvested before maturity; no use whatever is made of the husk except for fuel.

Copra is sun dried at considerable expense and with constant risk of heavy loss from sudden showers, or, during the rainy season, is placed in bins and smoked over slow fires; naturally the product is of a very inferior quality.

It seems that certain trees make excellent growth and fruit heavily when planted in sea sand, which is almost without plant food, provided their roots are laved by the rising tide and the sea breeze fans their leaves. Should it prove that their ability to live and flourish is dependent upon the presence of a nitrogen-producing organism capable of cultivation and distribution, so that the barren wastes of sand along our long coast can be made to produce cocoanuts advantageously, it would obviously be more economical to plant them there than to give up rich soil to their cultivation and incur the expense of purchasing and using artificial fertilizers.

It is found that horses and mules stand the heavy work on the rice farm as well as in the Southern States of America. A native teamster with 4 mules plows 4 acres of land per day, while a native plowman with 4 Chinese oxen plows 2% acres per day. The ordinary Filipino, using 2 carabaos, is able to plow about one-fifth of an acre per day; he must have two carabaos however, in order that they may be interchanged every two or three hours and allowed to get their mud baths, without which they soon become incapacitated for work.

The archipelago has a coast line more than double that of the United States, and not more than 10 per cent of this has been adequately charted. The exact geographical situation of a great portion of the east coast of the islands has never been determined, and there has been considerable uncertainty in regard to many other points. Much has already been accomplished by the Coast and Geodetic Survey, nearly 100 topographic sheets having been issued.