IO2 COFFEE I ITS CULTIVATION AND PROFIT. 



crossed between stake and plant to make a manner 

 of cushion. " Supplying" or filling up of failures 

 should be more carefully attended to, from time to 

 time, than it is on many estates. Opening new land 

 while the ground already brought "under cultiva- 

 tion" does not carry anything like the number of 

 plants it might and was intended to is, we need not 

 say, foolish in the extreme. Managers occasionally 

 push forward and take up fresh forest when as much 

 as twenty per cent, of the Coffee behind them is 

 dead or useless. This is profitable to no one, and 

 least of ail to those over-eager shareholders at home 

 who are usually at the bottom of the unwarranted 

 "extension." Failures may be divided into two 

 classes the inevitable and the accidental. The 

 first occur because the young seedling has been put 

 out over slab rock through which its roots cannot 

 penetrate. There is nothing to do but submit in 

 such cases. The next class is open to remedy, the 

 young plants having died because their tap roots 

 have been doubled up, because rats, or grub, or 

 grasshoppers have been at their tender shoots, or 

 from rough handling by the transplanting coolies. 

 Perhaps there is a boulder as big as a plate at the 

 bottom of their "pit." A little enquiry is nearly 

 sure to explain the reason of gaps in rows of Coffee ; 

 and unless it is rock underneath, or something of 

 the kind, a new plant nicely installed will well repay 

 the trouble of investigation and repair. Nothing has 

 been said about roads, as they will be noticed pre- 



