242 Coffee Planting. 



being found incorrect in practice. This seems much 

 as if we should undertake to produce a man, by 

 combining in due proportions in the laboratory the 

 various constituents of the human body. The vital 

 principle at least always remains absent in such 

 experiments (if nothing more), and so it is in 

 agriculture ; soils often seem to be rendered more 

 productive for a time by the addition of merely 

 chemical manures, but the effect is transitory, and 

 the plant which has thus been stimulated after- 

 wards falls back into a state of more hopeless weak- 

 ness and depression than ever. 



The necessary vital principle of nutriment for 

 plants seems only to be found in organic matter 

 (or in other words, in decayed vegetable or animal 

 bodies), and this it should always be the aim 

 of the cultivator, in some form or other, to combine 

 with the required mineral constituents, in order to 

 render manure permanently beneficial and effective. 



It now devolves upon us to inquire what are the 

 chemical constituents of the ash of coffee ? In 

 "Ferguson's Commonplace Book" for 1860, we 

 find the following analysis of West India Coffee 

 berries (made about ten years previously by Mr. 

 Herepath, of Bristol). Deducting the carbonic acid, 

 100 grains of ash gave the following result : 



Phosphate of Lime . . .45*551 

 Phosphoric Acid .... 1 2*801 



