1 5 8 Coffee Planting. 



pleasant fruit, in size and appearance much like 

 the yellow plum. 



The Jack is said to bear transplanting badly, 

 and it will therefore be necessary to deposit two 

 or three of the seeds a couple of inches below the 

 surface, wherever a tree is desired to grow. The 

 most healthy of the plants can afterwards be 

 selected. 



I remember once meeting an old French gentle- 

 man from the Mauritius, who informed me that a 

 plant of very rapid growth is used for the purpose 

 of shading the coffee and sugar plantations in that 

 island. I have not, unfortunately, been able to 

 ascertain its name, but my informant gave it as his 

 opinion that by its aid coffee might be successfully 

 cultivated in India on the plains ! The castor-oil 

 plant (Ricinus Communism Palma Christi), which 

 grows from six to ten feet high in a year, bearing a 

 crop (from which the oil is expressed) in the first 

 year, might perhaps be found useful in some cases, 

 as it requires but little care in cultivation ; but 

 I do not strongly recommend it for being grown 

 with coffee, it being apparently a surface-feeder, 

 and consequently likely to draw off much moisture 

 from the soil, while it would not prove very service- 

 able, its foliage not being luxuriant 



Plantains or Bananas are planted for shade in 

 St. Domingo, and at any rate these will not injure 



