of the tree. Thus in the course of a few days a fair-sized piece of
ground would be cleared, nothing of the forest remaining but charred
trunks and leafless branches. Then followed the planting. The
agricultural instruments employed were of the simplest pattern. A
dibble, or pointed stick of hard wood, was used to make the hole in
which the plant was deposited. This took the place of a plough, and a
branch served the purpose of a harrow. Sometimes the earth was dug and
smoothed with the blade of a canoe paddle. The labour of clearing and
planting the ground was done by the men, but the task of weeding it
generally devolved on the women. The first crop taken from a piece of
land newly cleared in the forest was yams, which require a peculiar
culture and frequent change of site, two successive crops being seldom
obtained from the same land. After the first crop of yams had been
cleared off, taro was planted several times in succession; for this root
does not, like yams, require a change of site. However, we are told that
a second crop of taro grown on the same land was very inferior to the
first, and that as a rule the land was allowed to remain fallow until
the trees growing on it were as thick as a man's arm, when it was again
cleared for cultivation. In the wet season taro was planted on the high
land from one to four miles inland from the village; other kinds of taro
were planted in the swamps, and these were considered more succulent
than the taro grown on the uplands. The growing crops of taro were
weeded at least twice a year. The natives resorted to irrigation, when
they had the means; and they often dug trenches to drain away the water
from swampy ground. Yams also required attention; for sticks had to be
provided on which the plants could run. The fruit ripens only once a
year, but it was stored up, and with care would keep till the next
season. The natives found neither yams nor bread-fruit so nourishing as
taro.[40]

[40] Violette, "Notes d'un Missionnaire sur l'archipel
de Samoa," _Les Missions Catholiques_, iii. (1870) p. 188; S.
Ella, _op. cit._ p. 635; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 54 _sq._;
G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, pp. 130 _sqq._, 338
_sqq._

The degree of progress which any particular community has made in
civilisation may be fairly gauged by the degree of subdivision of labour
among its members; for it is only by restricting his energies to a
particular craft that a