Much of all this areas is more or less bare and exposed ground probably not much more than 40% actually having vegetation on it, thus showing the sparseness of such vegetation as does manage to survive the uncongenial conditions. The swamps under taru cultivation need constant attention to keep them swampy enough for the taru and to keep the soil sweet for the crop. Roughly speaking these cultivation swamps lie at the extreme ends of the arms which reach to South and North thus more or less being towards the central part of the island though a small isolated patches appear elsewhere especially in the northern half of the island where the arm is not so definite or extensive. Natives have to stop the swamps from building up to too great a level to retain water and years of cultivation to a regular depth of about 1 1/2 feet with a top layer of soft seuelchy semi liquid mud. They annually cart in tons of vegetable matter and allow this to rot and form a more or less fertile black mud of humus mould. This prevents the soil becoming exhausted but even so a system of rotation and fallow is necessary to keep the crops up to a sufficient quantity to supply the food and to warrant sufficient return for the great labor entailed. These taru swamps with their abundance of rotting vegetation form ideal breeding grounds for many other types of insects beside mosquitoes and water breeding insects and molluscs, and consequently play a large part in the insectivorous birds and others breeding on the island. Also different forms of legumosa, the main one a flowering kind, which can stand swamp conditions and improve soil have been introduced by the mission- aries and the administration to try and combat the mosquitoes and fallow parts of the swamp are always under this. These flowering legumosa naturally play a part in the food of such flower feeding