ABSTRACT
Under the system of forest fallow, the cultivators can produce food for their own consumption with comparatively little toil and trouble. But they need a large area of land per family-including of course the land laying fallow at any given time-and they must therefore be thinly spread over the territory, grouped in relatively small communities. Within such small and widely-scattered groups, only a rudimental division of labour is possible, and therefore activities like the production of tools, weapons, household goods and clothing are time-consuming and rarely develop to a high level of perfection. The long distances to communities of higher civilization make it impossible, or at least uneconomical, to acquire such goods in exchange against basic foods. Therefore, in communities of forest fallow the production of food surpluses, though potentially large, occurs in actual fact only in those cases where such tribes happen to live near to plantations or mines so that they have a market within easy reach.
