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grown in Trinidad. Cocoa is grown in the first case by con- 

 tractors, and I need not tell you that the contractor does not 

 select his seed, and never did. It is only now we are begin- 

 ning to select seed. The consequence of the old method is 

 that the yield of our cocoa trees has varied very much. With 

 regard to his other criticism, that pods per tree is not a very 

 good method of calculation, I would point out that there is 

 not the slightest difficulty in getting the number of Ibs. per 

 acre if you have the pods per tree, and the reason we have 

 el-ected to take pods per tree is that there is a varying number 

 of trees per acre, in Trinidad at any rate. It is owing to 

 that fact that we have adopted the method of taking pods 

 per tree, leaving it to the particular cultivator to work out 

 the yield per acre. I believe myself in yield per acre, but 

 we want to get the small cultivator to understand what he is 

 doing. With regard to what Dr. Nicholls said as to shade, 

 we have conducted some experiments, but I have not given 

 any details, because the experiments have not arrived at a 

 stage where I can advantageously do so. We have taken 

 shade completely from trees 7 to 9 years old, and from trees 

 30 years old, and we have taken shade half away from 

 another similar lot of trees, and we are now trying 

 whether we can do altogether without shade. I would 

 also remind Dr. Nicholls of what he already knows : 

 that the flowers of the Immortelle are of considerable manurial 

 value; they return at least about 30 Ib. of nitrogen per acre, 

 whilst the nitrogen taken up by the cocoa bean is not more 

 than 15 Ib. per acre. There is, therefore, some ground for 

 allowing the Immortelle tree to remain as a shade tree. At 

 the same time we have all arrived at the conclusion that there 

 is too much shade in Trinidad. With regard to the difference 

 in yield between Grenada and Trinidad, I would remind Dr. 

 Nicholls that in Grenada cultivation is very much better carried 

 out. The cultivators manure their trees in Grenada to a much 

 greater 'extent than they do in Trinidad. In the experiments 

 where we have removed shade from 7 to 9 year old trees a 

 large quantity of new leaves have been formed, and they have 

 shaded the ground as well as, or better than, the Immortelles. 



I should like to make one remark with regard to claying 

 mentioned by Mr. Knapp. Claying has lately been made a 

 great deal of as a question of adulteration. As a matter of 

 fact, we are satisfied that a small covering film of clay is 

 beneficial, and from the commercial point of view, if we use 

 only a small percentage of clay and produce beans of a better 

 quality, we sell those beans at a higher price than if we did 

 not use the clay, so there is the answer to that question. 



