THE CULTIVATION OF COCOA 99 



the same time ; after the harvesting of the corn (in three 

 to four months), the plantains or bananas have reached 

 a height of a few feet, and as they grow up quickly, they 

 may give useful shade to the soil within a few months, 

 if not planted too wide apart (say at a distance of 12 

 feet). It is, however, absolutely necessary that the corn 

 should not grow too close to the bananas ; otherwise 

 these are so checked in their early growth that the plants 

 remain weak and slow-growing for a long time. It is 

 advisable to keep an open space of at least 2 to 3 feet 

 in each direction round the plantains or bananas. 



Planting of wind-breaks. As has been pointed out, 

 it may sometimes be considered advisable not to leave 

 belts of the original forest as shelter -belts, but to 

 plant belts of trees specially adapted to act as wind- 

 breaks. 



The drawback of this method, however, lies in the 

 fact that good, strong, wind-breaking trees are always 

 slow growers, so that several years must elapse before the 

 trees planted can serve their purpose. It is therefore 

 advisable to plant in addition a quick-growing kind of 

 tree to provide shade during the first few years. Very 

 quick growers are : Albizzia moluccana, Adenanthera 

 pavonina and Adenanthera microsperma, 1 but their 

 wood is so brittle that they are only to be relied upon 

 in the first two or three years, and their lifetime is very 

 short. Fairly quick growers with less brittle wood are : 

 Erythrina umbrosa, Erythrina velutina, Gliricidia 

 maculata, Swietenia macrophylla, Cedrela odorata, 

 Pithecolobium Saman, Peltophorum ferrugineum, and 

 others. Slow growers but with very strong wood are : 

 the mango (Mangifera indica), the sapodilla (Achras 

 Sapota) and many timber trees, of which different 

 kinds are to be found in every country. Seed is 

 always easily to be had from the mahogany (Swietenia 

 mahagoni) and other trees of like character. 



1 The well-known Cassia florida, though a quick grower, cannot be recom- 

 mended, because for some reason or other it exerts a bad influence on other 

 trees in its neighbourhood, checking their growth. 



