The first requisite for the planter is choice of location.  It is true that the nutmeg tree, aided by manure, will grow in almost any soil where water does not lodge, but it makes a vast difference in the degree of success, whether the soil be originally good, or poor and improved by art.  The tree does not thrive in white or sandy soils, but prefers the deep red and friable soils formed by the decomposition of granite rocks and tinged with iron, and the deeper the tinge the better.  I am therefore inclined to think, that iron in the soil is almost necessary for the full development of the plant.  If under the before-mentioned soil there be a rubble of iron-stone at four or five feet from the surface (a very common formation in Singapore), forming a natural drainage, the planter has obtained all that he can desire in the ground, and needs only patience and perseverance to secure success.  The form of the ground ought to be undulating, to permit the running off of all superfluous water, as there is no one thing more injurious to the plant than water lodging around its roots, although, in order to thrive well, it requires an atmosphere of the most humid sort, and rain almost daily.  Besides the form of the ground, situation is highly desirable, particularly as regards exposure.  A spot selected for a nutmeg plantation cannot be too well sheltered, as high winds are most destructive to the tree, independently of the loss occasioned by the blowing off of fruit and flower.

At present there is abundant choice of land in Singapore, the greater portion of the island being as yet uncultivated, and much answering to the above description.  The land can be purchased from Government at the rate of from 10s. to 20s. per acre in perpetuity.  I would advise the man who wishes to establish a plantation, to select the virgin forest, and of all things let him avoid deserted gambier plantations, the soil of which is completely exhausted, the Chinese taking good care never to leave a spot until they have taken all they can out of it.  A cleared spot has a great attraction for the inexperienced, and it is not easy to convince a man that it is less expensive to attack the primitive forest, than to attempt to clear an old gambier plantation, overrun with lalang grass; but the cutting down and burning of large forest trees is far less expensive than the extirpation of the lalang, and as the Chinese leave all the stumps of the large trees in the ground, it is almost more difficult to remove them in this state than when you have the powerful lever of the trunk to aid you in tearing up the roots, setting aside the paramount advantage that, in the one case you possess a fresh and fertile soil, in the other an effete and barren one.