22 THE NATURE AND CULTIVATION OF COFFEE. 



superintendents and men will be economized by partial 

 formation of the roads before the other work is com- 

 menced, leaving them to be completed when there is 

 spare labour on the estate. 



4. Lining and pitting. The distances usually 

 observed for planting coffee are six feet by six feet or 

 six feet by five feet. Close planting is serviceable in 

 hindering the growth of the weeds, and in enabling 

 the plants to shelter each other from the effect of high 

 winds ; and of course the extra number of plants to 

 the acre are followed, in the first two crops, by pro- 

 portionate increase of produce. Having, therefore, 

 fixed on the distance to be observed, the easiest 

 method is to mark off a cross in the centre of each 

 field, and proceeding from the centre with a line with 

 marks at the proper distances for the spaces between 

 the stakes. The ends being held at equal distances 

 from the last stakes, are put in by boys at the mark on 

 the line. Trifling inaccuracies must happen in conse- 

 quence of the irregularity of the land, but the only 

 method to avoid these would be by irregularly extend- 

 ing the distance between the plants, sometimes to 

 eight and nine feet ; and on the whole the plan is as 

 good as can be followed. At the distance of six feet 

 by six feet, an acre will contain about 1200 plants, but 

 the space occupied by roads, rocks, stumps, etc., will 

 probably curtail this amount about ten per cent. 

 stakes being put in to mark the places where the pits 

 are to be made ; these are generally dug by contract, 

 and it may be useful to know that, in ordinary forest 

 soil, with an average amount of stones and roots, 

 thirty pits, twenty inches wide by eighteen inches 



