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grown in Trinidad. Cocoa is grown in the first case by con- 
tractors, and I need not tell you that the contractor does not 
select his seed, and never did. It is only now we are begin- 
ning to select seed. The consequence of the old method is 
that the yield of our cocoa trees has varied very much. With 
regard to his other criticism, that pods per tree is not a very 
good method of calculation, I would point out that there is 
not the slightest difficulty in getting the number of Ibs. per 
acre if you have the pods per tree, and the reason we have 
elected to take pods per tree is that there is a varying number 
of trees per acre, in Trinidad at any rate. It is owing to 
that fact that we have adopted the method of taking pods 
per tree, leaving it to the particular cultivator to work out 
the yield per acre. I believe myself in yield per acre, but 
we want to get the small cultivator to understand what he is 
doing. With regard to what Dr. Nicholls said as to shade, 
we have conducted some experiments, but I have not given 
any details, because the experiments have not arrived at a 
stage where I can advantageously do so. We have taken 
shade completely from trees 7 to 9 years old, and from trees 
30 years old, and we have taken shade half away from 
another similar lot of trees, and we are now trying 
whether we can do altogether without shade. I would 
also remind Dr. Nicholls of what he already knows: 
that the flowers of the Immortelle are of considerable manurial 
value; they return at least about 30 lb. of nitrogen per acre, 
whilst the nitrogen taken up by the cocoa bean is not more 
than 15 lb. per acre. There is, therefore, some ground for 
allowing the Immortelle tree to remain as a shade tree. At 
the same time we have all arrived at the conclusion that there 
is too much shade in Trinidad. With regard to the difference 
in yield between Grenada and Trinidad, I would remind Dr. 
Nicholls that in Grenada cultivation is very much better carried 
out. The cultivators manure their trees in Grenada to a much 
greater extent than they do in Trinidad. In the experiments 
where we have removed shade from 7 to g year old trees a 
large quantity of new leaves have been formed, and they have 
shaded the ground as well as, or better than, the Immortelles. 
I should like to make one remark with regard to claying 
mentioned by Mr. Knapp. Claying has lately been made a 
great deal of as a question of adulteration. As a matter of 
fact, we are satisfied that a small covering film of clay is 
beneficial, and from the commercial point of view, if we use 
only a small percentage of clay and produce beans of a better 
quality, we sell those beans at a higher price than if we did 
not use the clay, so there is the answer to that question. 
