48 Coffee Planting. 



guavas, and other fruit-trees yield their produce 

 freely with but little nursing or persuasion. Any 

 one taking the trouble to keep a garden, can easily 

 keep himself supplied all the year round with 

 vegetable marrow, cucumbers, cabbages, lettuce, 

 potatoes, tomatoes and capsicums, besides many 

 pleasant and wholesome vegetables purely in- 

 digenous and unknown elsewhere. 



In general terms the seasons may be thus de- 

 scribed. During December, January, February, 

 and March, the winter months, the rainfall is 

 trifling ; the thermometer may range from 75 to 80 

 in the shade at noon, the temperature being so cold 

 and invigorating from sunset to sunrise, that in- 

 doors fires, and at night blankets are by no means 

 unacceptable. April and May are also pleasant 

 months, though the occasional showers and thunder- 

 storms alternating with hot sunshine, which now 

 precede the south-west monsoon, render the at- 

 mosphere, if more favourable to vegetation, un- 

 fortunately less healthful to man. The coffee 

 plants, previously somewhat enervated by the long 

 continuance of comparatively dry weather, now 

 begin to assume a more vigorous appearance. The 

 thunderstorms referred to, accompanied by heavy 

 falls of rain, generally come on in the afternoon 

 after hot sunshine, and a considerable evaporation 

 of miasma ensues, causing in some situations a 



