44 
question confronting the planter is what to use and how to 
use it. Barnyard manure cannot be obtained in the West 
Indies except in small quantities, and the only way to obtain 
soluble plant foods is to buy commercial fertilizers. This 
is strange to most planters when first confronted with it 
and on first sight it seems peculiar that a hundred pounds 
of sulphate or muriate of potash for instance, containing 
but fifty pounds of potash should be able to exert an in- 
fluence on an acre of land which already contains, accord- 
ing to analysis, several tons of that material. Experience 
in all countries have clearly demonstrated however, that it 
is the only remedy, and with cacao as well as with other 
crops it is short-sightedness to keep the trees in a half-starv- 
ed condition depending upon the slowly available plant 
foods in the soil. This is well recognized by the more 
progressive planters who are conducting experiments on 
their own plantations and by the Departments of Agricul- 
ture in the various Islands, all of which have been conduct- 
ing experiments for several years. 
While such experiments are valuable and really the only 
sure guide to follow, the results may be misleading where 
the rule of thumb methods is followed. In an old plan- 
tation with trees which are different, one from another 
n 
variety, vigor, prolificness ete., and where there are a num- 
ber of shade trees also more or less unequal, it is almost im- 
possible to obtain reliable results by comparing the yield 
from one plot to that of another. Furthermore the trees in 
a plantation having never been cultivated or manured will 
respond to a different treatment the first year or two to 
what they ought to have later. The first manurial opera- 
tions in such a plantation are liming and forking. This will 
almost invariably give good results. It will not last how- 
ever, and in six months or a year a fertilizer rich in nitrogen 
