BRAZILIAN COFFEES. 1 73 



enormous coffee industry of Brazil, which at present pro- 

 duces more coffee than all the other countries in the 

 world combined ; it being calculated that upwards of 

 1,500,000 acres of land are under coffee culture there, 

 containing nearly 600,000,000 trees, hundreds of millions 

 of dollars of capital being invested in its culture, sale 

 and transport. The cultivation of coffee in Brazil now 

 extends from the banks of the Amazon to the southern 

 province of Sao Paulo, and from the coast to the west- 

 ern limits of the country, the plant seeming to find the 

 requisite conditions of soil and climate in almost every 

 part of this vast region, and nearly everywhere giving an 

 abundant yield. Its chief zone of production for com- 

 mercial purposes, however, is chiefly confined to the coast 

 provinces of Bahia, Ceara, Rio Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Minas 

 Geraes and Espiritu Santo. 



In Brazil it was formerly the custom to propagate the 

 coffee plant by slips or " shoots" cut from the older 

 plants on the plantations, but at present it is more generally 

 grown from the seed, as in the Eastern countries. The 

 seeds are sown in nurseries planted with advanced stalks 

 of the mandioca, which serve to shade the sprints while 

 young and tender from the extremes of heat and cold 

 alike, but are gradually thinned out as the growth of the 

 young plants advance, the nursery at this period resembling 

 a young plum thicket. When the plants have reached 

 a height of from eighteen to twenty-four inches, they are 

 transferred to the plantations and planted from six to 

 ten feet apart, according to the district and conditions. As 

 a general rule a crop is not expected until four years after 

 setting out the young plants, unless when the plants are 

 from eighteen months to two years old before transplant- 

 ing, in which case a partial crop is obtained at the end of 

 the third year. Nearly all overthe Brazilian coffee zone the 



