lvi. Timehri. 



Whilst progress in this Colony with regard to coffee-planting during 

 the past ten years appears to us to be marked, our coffee-industry is 

 practically in a deplorable state of stagnation in comparison with that of 

 our neighbours in Surinam. There not only has the area planted with 

 Liberian coffee been greatly augmented but coffee is being grown on 

 excellent cultural lines, such as are followed by very few indeed of our 

 planters, with the result that on plantations there — plantations having 

 from, say, 400 to 800 acres of Liberian coffee in full-bearing — returns of 

 coffee per acre are attained which to growers having only local experi- 

 ence are almost incredible. I do not know of any coffee-plantation here 

 that can point to fields which yield year after year crops of from 1,500 to 

 even 2,000 lbs. of cured coffee per acre. Not alone have the Surinam 

 coffee-planters materially extended their cultivation and vastly increased 

 their yields per acre but by the establishment of coffee pulping, drying, 

 cleaning and grading machinery of the very best modern types they have 

 brought their product from being one of the lowest valued types of coffee 

 on the market to one occupying a very prominent position among the 

 highest grades of coffee in the market of New York. Unfortunately 

 there are not any coffee-plantations here of areas sufficient in the opin- 

 ions of their owners to justify investment in the latest types of coffee- 

 machinery and what is equally important, the employment of managers 

 capable of getting the best results from the be6t equipped factories. I 

 am satisfied that there is a certain remedy for this condition — it is the 

 installation of co-operative coffee factories in each of the more important 

 coffee-producing districts of the colony. These are at present the Polder 

 District, West Bank, Demerara Hiver, where the pioneer factory should 

 be established; the North West District; and the Pomeroon River Dis- 

 trict. I have little doubt that a pioneer-factory in any one of these dis- 

 tricts would be followed by demands for similar factories on the Esse- 

 quebo coast, the Berbice river district, and last but not least from the 

 very competent horti-agriculturists of Golden Grove and its immediate 

 vicinity. 



Cacao. 

 Cacao-planting does not appear to have ever been a prominent or 

 even a very promising industry in this colony. It was, however, one of 

 the earliest followed here and the great trees still remaining in the 

 cacao-grove, the sole remnant of the former plantation Markeye, at 

 Coomacka on the Berbice river testify to this. Our former President, the 

 late Honourable B. H. Jones ) described in Timehri, 1884, a visit to this 

 cacao-grove in the following words : 



" One cannot leave this district without paying a visit to Coomacka, 

 "as I venture to think that here will be found some of the largest cocoa 

 " trees in the world ; and my friend Mr. Nind, who accompanied me, is 

 " sure that there are none like them in Trinidad ; not trees to suit a cocoa 

 " planter but wild, luxuriant overgrown specimens, samples or what a 

 " cocoa tree if left to itself in a suitable soil will grow to. Some of these 

 " trees, groups of gigantic stems, are from 50 to 70 ft. high, with 

 " branches extending 67 ft. and measuring at a distance 5 ft. from the 



