232 COFFEE I ITS CULTIVATION AND PROFIT. 



food, together with about 30 to 50 cents more or less 

 per day. The plantation hands live contentedly on 

 this what would appear to us miserable pittance. 

 Coffee, like every other product which is dependent 

 upon atmospheric phenomena for its success, varies 

 in different seasons. The very best yield ever 

 known in Java was 13 piculs of clean Coffee per 

 bahoe, or i,7681bs. English, equal to about 867! Ibs. 

 per acre. An average yield is from 3 to 9 piculs 

 of clean Coffee per bahoe. But then rises the 

 dread form of the leaf disease, and by the latest 

 accounts this is showing itself strongly. From an 

 authoritative source we hear it was inevitable that 

 the fell fungus should run its destructive course, 

 lava soil to the contrary, and now it seems but a 

 question of time for Coffee to be as great a failure 

 in Java as it has turned out to be in Ceylon. The 

 latest accounts are most serious, thus : Batavia. 

 From the Director of Inland Administration infor- 

 mation has been received that the coffee-leaf disease 

 is becoming more and more noticeable in East 

 Java, chiefly in the provinces of Pasaruan, Probo- 

 linggo, and Bezukie, which hitherto had been 

 exempt from this infliction. The Coffee trees there 

 abound in berries everywhere, but owing to the 

 disease all the leaves have dropped off. In many 

 estates the trees display nothing else but branches 

 full of berries, which are still fresh-looking and 

 green, but have become partially black and have 

 dropped off. As the disease shows itself everywhere, 



