The problem of landownership in the Mekong Delta was of decisive importance to the result of the war in South Vietnam ended in April 1975 by the victory of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG), and also it is expected to be very important in estimating the political and socio-economic future of the country. Considering these conditions, the author makes a historical analysis of the problem of landownership in the Mekong Delta.
 Chapter I comments on the evolution of rice culture and the institutionalization of a system of landlord control over the 1862-1945 period. The following chapters are directed to analysis of the changing process of landholding in the Delta after the Second World War.
 Chapter II examines the land reform by the Viet Minh regime over the 1945-1954 period. The Viet Minh lowered rents and redistributed the land to tenants in the area they controlled. But during the interregnum of 1954-1959, the socio-institutional accomplishments of the Viet Minh were reversed by the Ngo Dinh Diem regime aided by the U. S. Government.
 Chapter III is a study of land reform by the Ngo Dinh Diem regime in the later half of 1950s. This land reform also aimed to protect the farmer's tenancy rights and redistributed paddy land to the farmers by limiting an owner's holding to 100 ha. But the effect of these land reform decrees had not been clearly established because this reform was accompanied by many abuses, and moreover this reform gave much less benefit to the tenants than the Viet Minh reform.
 Chapter IV examines the development of the 1960s NLF (National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, after June 1969 PRG=Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam) land policies and the favorable response to them by the farmers in the Delta.
 Chapter V discusses the new land reform by the Nguyen Van Thieu regime, planned as the South Vietnamese and U. S. Governments' most useful counter measure to NLF (PRG) land policies, in the beginning of the 1970s. With this new reform, the Government of South Vietnam aimed to give farmers almost the same benefits as the NLF reforms and granted rights even to tenants who had received land in the NLF distribution. This new reform was carried out relatively well. But even by this land reform, the superiority of the PRG over the Nguyen Van Thieu regime in the Mekong Delta was not changed.
 Through these land reforms of various Vietnamese regimes after the Second World War, the situation of landownership in the Mekong Delta has changed remarkably. Especially the size of landholding owned diminished markedly, and many tenants having become de facto masters of the land they tilled economic differences among farmers in the Delta are decreasing.
 Under these conditions, the PRG, two months after the liberation of all South Vietnam, recommenced the distribution of land to the farmers in the Mekong Delta for the completion of land reform as the foundation for building the socialist economy.
 Future changes of political and socio-economic conditions in the Mekong Delta after are worth attention.

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 Analysis of the primary freshwater fish faunas of the four principal areas of Southeast Asia shows that 1) the fauna of the Irrawaddy-Salwin basins, while including endemic forms, is as a whole intermediate between th faunas of India and the Indosinian district, 2) the faunas of the Greater Sunda Islands and the Mekong-Chao Phya basins have a close resemblance, but rather many mainland genera do not occur on the islands and some endemic forms are found in each the area, and 3) the fauna of the Song-Koi basin is similar to that of southern China and distinct from those of other part of Southeast Asia. In the cyprinid fishes there are several groups which differ in the evolutionary history and pattern of dispersal. Their ancestral stock may have been well established geographically in main part of Southeast Asia during the early Tertiary. The sharp boundary separating the Chinese and the Indo-Indosinian subregions suggests the former existence of a certain effective and long-lasting barrier extending from the Bay of Tonkin nearly to Yunnan.

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 In view of the importance of soil material characteristics in determining paddy soil capability, a method of classification for soil materials is proposed. Special attention was paid to make it as practically applicable as possible because of the great need for such a method of ready applicability, especially in the alluvial soil areas of tropical Asia.
 An X-ray fluorescence spectrographic method for the total chemical analysis of soil materials was proved satisfactory for routine use in terms of accuracy and time. The total chemical nature of soil material was described in terms of nine major elements (Si, Fe, Al, Ca, Mg, Mn, Ti, K, P) analyzed. Total chemical composition and mechanical composition data were subjected to data processing.
 To avoid redundance in information, 3 mutually independent principal components were extracted, which appear to represent different aspects of soil material features. From the 3 principal component scores taxonomic distance was computed as a similarity coefficient for use in numerical taxonomy.
 By means of numerical taxonomy 10 soil material classes were set up, each of which was characterized in terms of texture, base status, mineral composition, etc. In order to facilitate objective placement of a new sample in one of the classes, discriminant functions were derived for all pairs of the 10 material classes.
 The 10 soil material classes appear to represent the major varieties of paddy soil materials in tropical Asia. Since the correlation between the soil fertility rating and the soil material composition has been confirmed, the use of the 10 material classes as the basis of "soil family" separation in soil surveys would improve homogeneity of the lower taxonomic units ("soil series") and make their interpretation easier and more correct in relation to soil capability assessment.

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 This is the second paper of our joint work on the substitutability of parental roles among the Malay peasants in Kelantan and Melaka, focussing on so called "adoption". The salient points we raise are as follows : (1) The need for adoption is felt on the part of adopters owing to childlessness or deficiency in number of children, or in order to find comfort in having small children during the post-parental period. (2) The relationship with real parents may be severed temporarily but not completely. The adoptee usually has double identity with the family-circles of both pro-parents and real parents. (3) The agent of adoption is not a categorized group but an individual or a couple. Adoption is regarded as a dyadic contract. (4) Kinship-fostering tends to be lineal pro-parenthood and adoption of relatives to be collateral. (5) We find more adoptions in Melaka than in Kelantan. In Kelantan. In Kelantan people mostly adopt children of their siblings, while children of the unrelated are frequently adopted in Melaka. These differences may be related to the standard of living and the degree of urbanization of each area. Through these observations we conclude that the concept of the nuclear family is not valid for the Malay family.

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 Singapore's industrialization is one of the fastest of developing countries, and is often considered a model case. But it has been dependent on foreign capital and technology to a large extent, which gives rise to doubts as to its applicability to other developing countries where economic nationalism demands a stricter control of foreign capital. Singapore's experience shows, however, that a liberal policy towards foreign capital is a shortcut to the increase of manufacturing exports and the reduction of unemployment. Export-led growth without dependence on foreign capital is extremely difficult since many industries in the export market are oligopolistic and entry is greatly restricted, while those where entry is not so restricted suffer from a low growth potential.

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 This paper aims at finding a set of correlations possibly existing between rice cropping patterns and land forms of deltaic regions in Southern Asia where rice is planted. The Ganges-Brahmaputra, Chao Phraya, Mekong and Songkoi deltas are studied. Land forms are schematically categorized into six types, viz., Flood Releasing Area, Old Delta, Floodplain, Young Delta, Coastal Zone and Local Swale (Fig. 15). Five rice cropping patterns are distinguished, viz., Transplanted monsoon rice single cropping, Broadcast monsoon rice single cropping, Post-monsoon rice single cropping, Pre-monsoon rice single cropping and Double rice cropping (Fig. 14). The following correlations are obtained :
 1) Transplanted monsoon rice single cropping is practiced in such well drained area as Flood Releasing Area, Coastal Zone and the higher level of Old Delta;
 2) Broadcast monsoon rice single cropping is adopted in such poorly drained area as Floodplain, the lower level of Old Delta and the most part of Young Delta;
 3) Post-monsoon rice single cropping is found in such flood accumulating area as Local Swale;
 4) Pre-monsoon rice single cropping occurs forming patches in those plots where either irrigation facilities or natural moisture is available during the early monsoon period;
 5) Double rice cropping is practiced on areas where water control is possible with irrigation and/or drainage installations, regardless the physiographic units.

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 The pteridophyte flora of Thailand is reviewed from the standpoint of phytogeography. It is evident that the so-called Himalayan elements are predominant in the northern mountainous area and Malesian species are many in the Peninsular, although a distinct fall of flora cannot be determined except for the broad area of the Central plain where few species of pteridophytes grow. Using the distinct distributional pattern of our materials, the phytogeography of the pteridophytes is briefly summarized with special reference to tropical flora. Some examples are given concerning the taxa whose vicariants are found in contrasting areas. Several species are treated, considering the speciation of taxa and their distribution. Detailed interpretation must await further study.

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In preceding papers, about 600 Chinese crude drugs collected in Singapore were described and discussed on the basis of their origins with reference to "Yào-Cai-Xué, " (1961) and "The Gardens' Bulletin, Vol. 6" (1930).
 The present series of papers deals with Chinese crude drugs collected at Joon Ning Pharmacy, Kuching, Sarawak, East Malaysia, in 1971. Altogether 424 crude drugs were obtained, the greater part of which were of vegetable origin, the remainder being either of animal or of mineral origin. The vegetable drugs may be divided into 10 groups on the basis of their shape or their origin in the plant, e.g., bark, root, flower, etc.
 About half of the drugs, 203, are described in this paper. The parts of the plants are : wood and stem (42 out of 203), bark and root bark (16), rhizome (45), root (90), and leaf (10). These are sold in certain shapes and sizes (A to F below) in accordance with either their origin in the plant or the plant species; (A) stems and roots measuring >1cm in diameter-obliquely cut into pieces of 1-3mm thickness, (B) bigger trunks and branched roots-chips of 3-5mm maximum length, (C) small stems and herbs-cut into pieces of 3-7cm length, (D) bark-lengthwise strips of 3-5mm width are cut into pieces of 1-3mm length, (E) stems and roots of some plant species-cut into round slices of 1mm thickness, (F) drugs of small original size-without cutting.
 Further analyses of the Chinese crude drugs of Kuching in comparison with those of Singapore will be attempted in the papers to follow.

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 The variable rainy seasons in these countries are discussed in relation to the windfield. NE trade winds, SE trade winds, equatorial westerlies, ITCZ, NE monsoons, SW monsoons are important for the analysis of heavy rainfall in the low latitudes. For the area north of 10°N, tropical disturbances are also important. Most of these disturbances move through Thailand in autumn. Their season is later than in the case of Japan.
 The concentration of heavy rainfall in a small area is also interesting. There is an area of about 100km×100km on the eastern coast of Malaysia with over 100mm rainfall per day in the winter monsoon season.
 Five years moving means of monthly rainfall for many places are calculated. The amplitudes and phases of climatic change are very variable from place to place. The standard deviations of monthly rainfall are also calculated. These values are much larger than in the case of Japan, and vary according to the place and the season.

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