12* CULTIVATION OP COTTON AND COFFEE 
an inch thick. It was growing near a rivulet at the village of Yalle, 
amongst trees and shrubs, from which it obtained support. I look 
forward with some eagerness to the arrival of specimens of the plant. 
B. Seemann. 
CULTIVATION OF COTTON AND COFFEE IN THE 
VITI ISLANDS. 
[The following extracts from a letter by Mr. J. Storck to Mr. W. 
T. Pritchard, dated Nukumoto, Viti, May 24, 1864, will be read with 
interest. — Ed.] 
I have now about thirty acres planted with cotton, and three with 
coffee. Since the Eorotoga men have left me I work the whole plan- 
tation with Fijians, of whom I have two kinds, monthly men and piece- 
men. The first class I keep for the steady small-work that is going 
on about the house and plantation, whilst the others work in parties 
sometimes from 60 to 100 at a time. The monthly men get 2^ 
dollars a month, generally in cloth, and their food and a place to sleep 
+ 
in. At present I have teti of them, with whom I have made a greater 
and more successful experiment than ever missionary accomplished, 
viz., I have made the naked savages work with spades in the cotton- 
field, each plant being dug round and hilled up with a radius of about 
two feet. I have now nearly got through the whole of it. The piece- 
men I employ in weeding tlie cotton between the rows. The newly- 
made plantations are, as the first was, laid out in rectangular rows, of 
pretty much the same length and dimensions! When I want to have 
a field weeded, I walk with the chief or spokesman, along the edge of 
the field, and count the rows, which are on an average 120 yards long 
and 14 feet wide ; then for each row I agree to pay a fathom of 24- 
inch calico ; so that weeding the plantation three or four times a year 
costs me seventy odd doUars each time. To weed one of the average 
rows generally takes a fellow two days* steady work. I much prefer 
women to men ; they do it better. I used to keep the cotton pretty 
clean, but I found that the weeding alone would not do it, which 
made me try the digging; the trees would not thrive, from want of 
proper cultivation of the soil. If you recollect, the first two small 
plantations were treated in the following manner ; — when the plants 
