42 COFFEE PLANTERS’ MANUAL. 
quently obscuring the sun, and _ keeping his fiercest 
- Pays in check. The blossom once fairly set, the planter 
May form an approximate estimate of what his crop 
will amount to. From blossom till crop there is 2 
Japse of about seven months. 
Crop-TIME is to the planter the most interesting 
period of the year. For it he has worked, and waited, — 
and hoped, during the three preceding years, if anew 
estate; and if an cld one, his reward or the labors 
of the year igs n w in view. For it he must be pre- 
pared with a force of laborers twice as large as dur- 
ing the rest of the y ar, if his estate have been 
weedy, and four times as large if it be clean. The 
laborers are chiefly Tamils from the Indian Continent 
who immigrate to this island in search of employ- 
ment. Many of them come and go for crop gather- | 
ing, as tlie Irish laborers come over to England for 
the harvest, returning to their country after it is over. 
Sinhalese also are frequently available for this work : 
but they are not such good pickers as the Tamils, 
while they expect more pay. When the coffee is ripe 
on the trees it is called cherry: the outer covering 
called the pulp resembling in size and color that of 
a ripe English cherry. Inside this are two beans, en- 
veloped in covers or cases like parchment, and called 
by that name. Again, the silver skin, inside the 
parchment, is a thin coating which adheres to the 
bean, and of which it is only divested by drying in 
the sun during the preparation for shipment at Co- 
lombo. 
CHERRY Ripe is a pretty sight. None more lovely, 
animating or interesting can present itself to the ardent 
plant-r than his fields of coffee trees laden and borne 
down at ev'ry bough with rich clusters of blood-red 
fruit. One such tree in heavy bearing would be a 
mect sign for a fruiterer’s shop. And glad would an 
Fnglish fruiterer be to have such a sign-post. With 
fai. soil, climate, and season, the tendency of the 
coffee bush is to bear heavily. Sometimes os much as 
2 an: even 3 lb. may be gathered off one tree. Yet 
1 lb. per tree over a field or over an estate is a high 
average. This is of course | lb. of clean coffee—of 
tue bean itself after bein» divested of the pulp, parch- 
ment and silver skin, It is plucked from the tree by 
the hand—the coolies picking regularly in rows. Each 
man takes a row or two rows if crop be not heavy— 
and proceeds up it regularly, dropping his pickings 
int) wua’t is call-d a cooty sack, or small bag slung 
round his waist with a string, cipable of bolding from 
4 to 4 of a bushel. When full, he empties it into 
a large two-bushel bag, which he has left on the nearest 
road at a convenient distance from where he is pick- 
