368 REPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



augurs well for the success of this crop whenever market conditions or 

 a rise in prices again permit the rehabilitation of the industry. Even 

 under the most adverse conditions of shallow, sterile soils, excessive 

 rainfall, and acid or poisonous subsoils the yield per tree and per acre is 

 often surprisingly large. On the Horner plantation, Kukaiau, 400 trees 

 yielded 1,500 pounds of coffee at their first crop. On both the Homel- 

 and Louisson plantations in Hamakua, individual trees have yielded 

 from 5 to 7 pounds of coffee — not simply selected trees at wide inter- 

 vals, but whole fields. As judged by results in pounds of coffee per 

 acre, the Hamakua district is absolutely ideal for this crop, and this 

 district alone can challenge the world with the quality of its product. 

 The berries are borne (on the Guatemalan variety) from 20 to 30 in a 

 cluster, and the clusters are so thick along the branches that one won- 

 ders how any more berries could possibly be borne on any part of 

 the plant, unless they were underground on the root. (PI. XXVIII, 



fig- 1.) 



The coffee lands of Hamakua overlap the cane lands. Mr. J. M. 

 Horner, the pioneer in this industry, states that the area suited to 

 coffee in Hamakua comprises a belt 35 miles long and 3 miles wide, 

 and from 500 to 3,000 feet elevation. It reaches from about 2 miles 

 on the Hilo side of the Maulua gulch to the Kohala plain. The bulk 

 of this 67,200 acres is still government land, and if such conditions 

 should arise as would permit an extension of the coffee industry in 

 Hawaii nearly all of this ai^ea could be utilized. At a fair average 

 yield of one-half ton per acre, the arable portion of this stretch of fertile 

 forest land could be made to produce from 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 

 pounds of coffee per annum. Hamakua coffee was awarded the highest 

 premium at the Omaha Exposition, in competition with coffee from 

 all over the world — from Java, Brazil, Central America, Arabia, and 

 various South American countries. 



The typical Hamakua coffee soil is a mellow forest loam, deep and 

 well drained yet retentive of moisture, easily worked, and quickly 

 responding to fertilization and good cultivation. The district is dis- 

 tinguished from those bordering it by an absence of running streams. 

 The abundant rainfall (about 100 inches per annum) sinks into the porous 

 soil and is readity conserved by deep tillage. It was a matter of com- 

 ment that the crops grown on these typical coffee soils exhibited a 

 remarkable resistance to drought during the dry season of 1901. 



At the time of the height of the coffee industry in Hawaii, in 1897, 

 1898, and 1899, upward of 6,000 acres were planted to this crop in the 

 Olaa district. There were about 1,500 families of small settlers and 

 homsteaders in the Puna, Hilo and Olaa districts, all more or less depend- 

 ent on the future of coffee. Now, December, 1901, there are not to 

 exceed 250 families. Of the 200 white settlers in Olaa alone, only 

 some 25 now remain, and most of these depend on other money crops 



