ABSTRACT
So far we have described only one system of gardening in full detail. All our general remarks about work and magic, the storage of harvest gifts, and the principles of division of labour were built round a concrete account of the Omarakana gardening system. I have meant it to be taken as a pattern and type of gardening in general, for, as we know, Omarakana gardening stands for the gardening of Kiriwina, and to every Trobriander, indeed to every native of the Northern Massim area, Kiriwina stands for good gardens. It was obviously better to describe one system fully than several superficially, and to give the same detailed account of some score or so of gardens would be impossible, both from the point of view of the field-worker and of the reader. The value of such details lies not so much in the knowledge of them for their own sake as in that they reveal the structure of the Trobriander's gardening customs and beliefs, the length to which he goes in the definition of ritual procedure and the way in which these elements integrate into a consistent system of behaviour.
