SITUATION AND ASPECT. 55 



health and life, while those situated on the southern are 

 yellow, drooping and sickly; even in districts where coffee 

 will not thrive without a considerable amount of shade 

 the plants thrive well with little or even none on a 

 northern bank, and look better than on a moderately 

 shaded southern aspect. Nor in the nursery is the 

 effect less of aspect, less striking, a nursery situated on 

 a northern slope requiring less water and far less shade 

 over the young plants than in a nursery sloping towards 

 the south. 



With regard to the aspect of wind the subject is an 

 infinitely more difficult one than aspect as regards the 

 sun's rays, the value of the latter being mathematically 

 ascertained, for in countries full of hills and ravines one 

 is constantly liable to be deceived as to the points that 

 are exposed and those that are sheltered from the force 

 of the wind ; what is the right side of the hill for one 

 planter is often the wrong side for another, whose 

 plantation is perhaps only a few miles distant. While 

 one planter may rail against the east wind, another will 

 be equally loud against a west. The winds, however, 

 that are most to be dreaded as being absolutely fatal to 

 a coffee plantation are the fierce gales accompanied by 

 torrents of rain. These winds are injurious in two ways : 

 first, the plants are blown about, their hold on the soil 

 weakened and the tender rootlets broken as fast as they 

 are formed, and in the second case, the rain which 

 accompanies such winds is driven into the hillsides with 

 such force as to occasion a certain amount of wash, the 

 particles of soil being lifted and valuable top soil swept 

 away and utterly lost. The southwest winds are only 

 fatally injurious on the first barrier; further inland their 

 force is greatly modified, and to such an extent that 

 little or no injury results from them. 



