ABSTRACT
I N Part I1 a number of cultivating peoples in various types of country and raising different crops by various methods were considered. The world distribution of the various food plants and the problems concerned with the development of the different methods of cultivation will be considered later; 'for the present we shall review the differences of habitat, the variation in actual methods and the wide variation in the social and political organizations based on - a cultivating economy. The chapters of Part I1 cannot pretend to cover all the variations of agricultural economy in the non-European world. Nearly a quarter of mankind-the great populations of China-lacks any exemplification. Our attention is, however, mainly directed to the simpler societies, and, moreover, the salient characteristics of Chinese agriculture and,society are so well known and have beenso well portrayed in a number of accessible studies that no summary is required here. Nor has a full account of a people practising a rudimentary agriculture in temperate latitudes been introduced, for in the Old World Western or Chinese civilizations have long since invaded the northern areas, establishing plough cultivation, incorporating earlier peoples in larger political units and assimilating them to their civilization, while in North America Europeall occupation also destroyed the native economies of the north-east before adequate studies and records were made. Indeed, save in eastern North America and the north island of New Zealand practically no primitive cultivation survived in temperate latitudes when European explorers first came to know the more remote parts of the earth.
