Statistics of Javanese Coffee Trade. 243 



lighten tlie j^ractical coffee planters, already on the spot, as 

 to the deterioration of that plant, made anything but a 

 favourable impression. Some bitter wags, indeed, of whom 

 there is no lack in Java, any more than of Punches or Charivari 

 at home, said that the mission of Professor Yriese was as 

 singular as if a native Javanese had been despatched to 

 Holland in order to teach the farmers there how to make 

 cheese. 



Nevertheless, the solution of this question of the degeneracy 

 of the coffee is of the very highest importance to the country, 

 as it produces annually about 800,000 piculs (100,000,000 lbs.) 

 coffee beans,* and as its climate and soil are eminently suit- 

 able for a far more extended development of that branch of 

 cultiv-ation, which was first introduced from Mocha into 

 Java, about 1718, by the then Governor, Hendrik Zwoarde- 

 croon.f The entire coffee crop must be delivered by the 

 coffee planters to the Grovernment at a fixed j)rice, and while 

 paying in the interior 3 J guilders (55. lOd.) per picul (125 

 lbs.), it fetches in Batavia, where the people are far more 



* The commercial and statistical particulars of Java, for which we are mainly in- 

 debted to the kindness of Mr. Eraser, the Austrian Consul in Batavia, will be specially 

 considered in a dillerent part of the work. 



t The Javanese agriculturist, especially the coffee planter, is sadly tormented 



by three kinds of grass, which Dr. Junghuhn has named the Javanese Trinity, and 



which are invariably found with the coffee plant — Erichthitas P'alerianifolia (which 



was introduced from Mocha with the coffee shrub, and was never before known in 



Java), Agerahun Conisoides, and Bideus Simdaica. The civet-cat, too (called Luah in 



Javanese, Jjaruh in the Sunda language), does great damage to the coffee plantations, 



just as the crop is being collected. It eats only the fleshy part of the brown berry, 



the beans, at least according to what the Javanese say, actually gaining a flavour 



by the process to which they are subjected in the maw of the animal ! 



R 2 



