COFFEH PLANTERS’ MANUAL. 29 
If clean or monthly weeded, you will use the scraper, 
or as the coolies called it karandi (a spoon). There 
are various kinds of this instrument :—1st, The piece 
of hoop bent at one end like the letter 7 and at the 
other pointed. Then there is the same hoop without 
the point, fastened on to the end of a stick about 
three feet long, which the coolies work standing. 
There are also varieties of pointed diggers, and scrap- 
ers of various forms, used by the laborers in a sitting 
posture, suitable for taking out single weeds here 
and there. Each have their recommendations, to ex- 
plain which, space in this small work cannot be 
afforded. The tyro will soon however learn for him- 
self the tool best suited to his particular circumstances, 
and will adopt it. Again there is the hand-weeding 
system, whereby everything is pulled up by the band— 
no pointed instrument being allowed. And where this 
is practicable it is doubtless the best and most pro- 
fitable system, for, as most of our plantations are 
hilly, and from the nature of the ground subject to 
be burned by the sun, and washed by the rain, whereby 
much valuable earth is wasted, it is well to disturb 
the soil as little as possible. 
PRUNING is perhaps the most important operation 
of the planter. It requires his careful and judicious 
supervision: for, while nothing is simpler than to cut 
off 2 or 3 cwt. per acre, nothing is more difficult than 
sticking them on. Many planters, from a _ laudable 
desire to have an ornate tree, cut, hack, strip and 
lop off everything that militates against the regu- 
larity of its proportions; but the prudent planter will 
study to prefer crop to symmetry. Where a_ planta- 
tion has been carefully tended in its earlier years; 
where it has been properly, and regularly handled, 
it will not, when it arrives at maturity, give much 
trouble in trimming; and except the cutting oft dead 
wood, or wood that has borne (for the same wood 
never bears twice) removing suckers, cross branches, 
and exuberant shoots from the centre and along the 
primaries, in the way hereafter explained, there will 
be very little to do in that line for some time. It 
is after an estate has borne two or three crops—after 
it has, either from over-cutting or from want of timely 
handling, been allowed to get matted, umbrella-topped, 
or choked up by superfluous wood, that the real 
difficulty of pruning begins. It is now too that the 
planter’s skill and science are called into play. Asto 
the best time and mode of dealing with a field so 
circumstanced, opinions differ, even among practical 
men who have made the business their study. For 
instance, Mr. James Taylor, a planter of considerable 
experience, thinks pruning should not be commenced 
