August i, 1882.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



153 



120a per handieJweigVit, is very coufident that, if pro- 

 perly grown and prepared, it would easily fiud n 

 market at SOs, which is a price far beyond any now 

 attained. But h^ points out that, while in TriuiJad 

 the cac:io field j-ielcis no profit on its low shade trees, 

 in Jamaica the banana will give good shade and pro- 

 vide fruit to meet the increasing demand in the United 

 States. In Grenada, where cacao is also successfully 

 cultivated, the growers suffer, we may here state, from 

 an evil which is at least as bad as our high winds. 

 Mr. Ober in his " Camps in the Caribees," recently 

 jjublishid, says of the cacao cultivation in Grenaila ; — 

 "Happy and cuuteuled as the negro may be in his 

 wealtli of cacao trees, he is sometimes enraged at the 

 depredations committed by the forest cxnadrupeds, 

 for the rats, not content with the succulent cane, 

 eagerly seek out the sweet pulp of the cacao. 

 Where monkeys are abundant, as in Grenada, 

 they commit great havoc, not only gnawing holes in 

 the pod5 as they hang on the trees, but carrying 

 away all they can hold in their arms. In one of my 

 moukev-hunting excursions I stopped at the house 

 of a very agreeable planter, in the mountains. He 

 declared that one year the moukeys nearly destroyed 

 his crop : and not only ate the cacao seeds, but 

 brought the empty pods and placed them on his door 

 step, thus adding insult to injury. [Oh ! — Kd.] 

 * * * I have seen heaps of cacao pods, each with a 

 small hole in it au inch or so in diameter, where 

 the monkey had thrust in his hand to scoop out the 

 pulp." In Jamaica, the mongoose will kill the rats, 

 and we have no moukeys. Conntry readers will be glad 

 to learn that the Government will print and issue Mr. 

 Morris' lecture for public information at once. — Jamaica 

 Weekly (jleaner. 



VARIETIES OF LIBEEIAN COFFEE. 

 The uniform type of the Arabian coffee in Ceylon 

 has be n maintained so completely, that any variation 

 of habit and appearance, beyond that caused by soil 

 and treatment, has been of the rarest occurrence. 

 The planter therefore accustomed to the cultivation 

 of this species was little prepared for the boundless 

 variety of tlie Liberian species, that runs from the 

 fishing-rod on eud, with a crow's nest on the sum- 

 mit, to the dwarf, that on thirty inches of stem has 

 crowded eighteen pairs of branches, the lowest and 

 longest of which only measure fifteen inches. Again 

 the different specimens differ from each other in 

 every possible way : taking one huudred plants grown 

 from imported seed, jjut out on the same day, in 

 the same soil, and treated exactly the same in every 

 way, for two and-a-half years, there is a vast range 

 of variety in the heia;ht at which they begin to 

 branch, running from cue foot to three or more ; in 

 the regularity of their brauchiug : one topped at six 

 feet having thirty-four primaries, while its neighbour 

 topped at seven feet has only seventeen : one may 

 have short, stiff" erect branches, while another close 

 by will have them running out almost horizontally, 

 and five feet in length. Then there is a vast range 

 in the size, form, and colour of the leaf, from 5x11 

 inches to 5x2, and from the deepest dark green to 

 ■B dusky yellow. One will be a close mass of foliage, 

 while the next, without having suffered hom I-fmiileia, 

 is 60 bare that one might count all its leaves with- 

 lout tcmching it. So. in crop-yieldiug qualitie.% they 

 ire as unlike as in other respects. One tree will have 

 400 rip" cherries, and 3,000 of others in various stages, 

 SO 



while its neighbour has not 100 altogether ; one has 

 long foot stalks, that allow as many as 25 cherries 

 to come to maturity in a single cluster, while another 

 is so short, that half that number cannot possibly 

 survive the pressure. The fruit of one tree is glob- 

 ular; of another oval. One tree ripens its fruit as 

 perfectly as the Arabian species, while the cherries 

 on another only change to a brownish yellow, crack, 

 and dry on the branches. 



Out of all these varieties it is enough to reject for 

 propagation, all the inferior castes, the stragglers, the 

 lo"gjointed loose-leaved kinds, the upright-branched, 

 every one of which gets the fungus early, and never 

 shakes it off, specially the long-legged kinds that always 

 take " a list to leeward where wind blows, and gives 

 so mnch to bare stem, that they have not room 

 left, within cultivable height, for a fair 

 amount of bearing wood. The first quality to be 

 desired in a Liberian coffee tree is the power of 

 resisting the fungus. There is no certainty that 

 this resisting power is a hereditary quality, but 

 the best practicable course is never to take seed 

 from any tree that has ever exhibited a pinspot 

 of Hemileia. The other qualities to be desiderated 

 are low branching, full, dark foliage, good bearing 

 quality, a long fruit-stalk, an oval raiher than a 

 globular fruit, long spreading branches, instead of 

 short ones loaded with secondaries and tertiaries 

 before a crop is gathered, and the capacity of fully 

 ripening its crop within the year. We are acquainted 

 with no one variety that combines all the qual- 

 ities we want in this model tree, and, thei-efore, among 

 those that have hitherto resisted the fungus, there 

 is no choice; for, if this plant, or that, has one or 

 two of the qualifioations that satisfy, they are prob- 

 ably deficient in others equally important. So far 

 then as our observation has gone, we have not met 

 with one plant, that combines nil the qualities desired in 

 Liberian coffee ; but there are three, perhaps four, 

 varieties that come pretty close to perfection without 

 reaching it, and any one of them will be a tolerably 

 satisfactory plant to cultivate, unless one still un- 

 decided question should iu the course of extendeil 

 experience receive au adverse answer. 



We have no assurance that a plant that has run 

 inio such wide variety in its habitat will keep true to 

 the type of the immediate pareut elsewhere. Certainty 

 on this point can only be reached by patient ex- 

 periments, extending over five or six years, but there 

 are already facts available that seem to militate 

 against the favourable side of the question. We cannof 

 suppose that either Liberia or Udapola supplied their 

 customers with seed from trees of " fishing-rod" 

 style, yet from both we have seen specimens of that re- 

 markable variety. The plants sent to Ceylon by Mr. 

 Bull were all of one kind (though not the best kind. 

 we now have iu Cey'on) ; yet from Mausava seed there 

 has been no uniformity of development. One plant 

 branches at eighteen inches, and another runs up 

 above three feet, without a branch, and what other 

 diversities may hereafter occur we cannot say. There 

 can be no doubt that, if we select seed from the best 

 kinds, and systematically destroy nil the weaker kinds, 

 as soon as they mauiftet their qualities, we will arrive 



