GENERAL CULTIVATION. 45 



Picking the crop is usually performed by women 

 and children, as they can pick quite as much as an able- 

 bodied man, or it is done by contract, when all hands 

 are set to it and receive a given rate per bushel. In 

 Southern India the average paid for picking is three 

 pence to four pence per bushel, making the charges for 

 one cwt., under this head, three shillings to four shil- 

 lings. On old estates with a ripe crop of eight to 

 twelve cwts. per acre on them, an expert picker will 

 gather as much as six bushels in ten hours, but the 

 average throughout the season, on ordinary estates, 

 does not exceed two bushels. Bags should always be 

 provided for the purpose of containing the ripe coffee 

 cherries, and for carrying them to the store, as baskets 

 are very liable to be upset, and stones and refuse may 

 be picked up with the scattered fruit, which will 

 damage the pulpers. The inefficiency of most of the 

 machinery, at present in use for coffee pulping, has 

 been already noticed. One of Walker's double disc 

 pulpers will pulp fifty bushels per hour, with the labour 

 of six men in a properly constructed pulping house, 

 and other pulpers will do nearly as much, but at a 

 considerable sacrifice of coffee, as most of these 

 machines cut from five to ten per cent of the beans. 

 Considerable ingenuity may be exercised in erecting 

 the buildings so as to economise labour. The pulpers 

 should be so placed that there is ample room for the 

 washing vats or cisterns, without carriage of the coffee 

 from one vat to another by manual labour, and a ready 

 egress for the tails or pulp of the coffee should be pro- 

 vided by which it can be conveyed some distance from 

 the pulping house and works. The situation of the 



