INTRODUCTION. XI 
from tossing it under the bush and leaving it there, 
to depositing it in the bottom of a hole under two 
feet of soil, that has not found advocates, and what- 
ever plan has been proposed, its advocate professes to 
be a student of nature. ‘‘ Nature,” says one, ‘‘ never 
buries her fertilizers in holes, but drops them on 
the surface.” On this it may be remarked that when 
we have manufactured an artificial coffee bush we 
have thwarted and tortured nature too much to 
pretend to follow her in any part of its treatment; 
we have made a condition of surface very different 
from that on which nature feeds her wild vegetable 
children. Our manures are much more elaborately 
got up than nature’s, and we cannot afford to let them 
be baked into inertness by the sun, or washed into 
like condition by the rains; besides, our plant has its 
roots under the surface, and it is not conducive to 
its health and longevity to encourage the production 
of feeders above the natural surface. Again we are not 
well acquainted with the resources of nature in 
placing food within reach of the roots of plants en- 
tirely under ber own charge, and if we were fully 
informed of her operations, ten to one that the con- 
ditions are so changed that we cannot apply them 
to the case in point. To the gentleman who tells 
us that nature, having furnished the coffee plant 
with a deep taproot, intended that it should assist 
n collecting the food of the plant, and there- 
ore should have manure placed in deep pits to en- 
courage it to throw out feeding roots, I reply: I 
have never questioned nature on the point, but I 
have observed that in all sizes of hole, in all kinds 
of soil, the coffee plant throws out its strongest 
lateral roots within six inches of the surface. What 
nature’s intentions may be as to the uses of the tap- 
root I know not, but I can freely attest that, the 
deeper it goes, the fewer, the shorter, and the more 
slender, are the laterals thrown out. It isin the process - 
of chemical decomposition that any organic substance 
supplies plant food; the circulation of atmospheric 
air is the chief agent of decomposition; if therefore 
I bury my fertilizer with eighteen inches of earth 
trodden down over it, I put it where decomposition 
is seriously impeded ; where there are few or no roots 
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