COFFEE 201 



growth. It can be induced artificially by injuring 

 the roots. When the crop is harvested, the suckers 

 which spring up from the roots often show the 

 disease, even though the parent plant was entirely 

 normal. Plants that have been burned by improper 

 applications of Paris green also often develop 

 mosaic disease. Good cultural methods which 

 avoid shock or injury of any kind to the plant, and 

 which keep it growing steadily and thriftily, are the 

 best safeguards against this trouble. Care in the 

 seed beds is also necessary, since poor, stunted plants 

 are more likely to develop this disease. 



Coffee ( Coffea sps. ) 



Coffee is strictly a tropical product. In a natural 

 state it grows as an undershrub in mountainous 

 forests, and when cultivated the same conditions 

 must be somewhat closely approximated. It is 

 grown extensively in Mexico, Central and South 

 America, and Porto Rico. Formerly it was one of 

 the principal crops of Cuba : but owing to the high 

 price of labor and the greater profit in sugar cane, its 

 cultivation has been nearly abandoned. 



The best coffee is usually grown at an altitude of 

 from two to five thousand feet, and often on hind too 

 steep for the cultivation of other crops. It is 

 injured by periods of prolonged drought and thrives 

 best where the rainfall is somewhat evenly distrib- 

 uted throughout the year. 



The best soils are rather heavy clays well provided 

 with humus. 



