Abstract
IT is now more than a century since Sir Samuel Baker recorded his lamentable failure to establish an English country gentleman's estate on the grassy plains of the heart of Ceylon. His pedigree cattle and sheep soon succumbed and his carefully selected wheat and oats showed early promise, but failed to come to harvest. No less concerned was his coachman at the death of his carriage horses; with characteristic though misplaced resource, he sought to uphold his master's dignity by teaching an elephant to trot gracefully and so to replace the missing horses. He succeeded only in driving a fine elephant to death. Since then, many advances have been made in the knowledge of tropical agriculture, yet many of the major problems of white settlement in the tropics and acclimatization to tropical environments remain unsolved.
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White Settlement in the Tropics. Nature 144, 171–173 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144171a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144171a0