COFFEE CULTIVATION AND MANORING. 117 
holing is performed for the first time in goed soil it 
has the same effect as the application of cattle manure. 
Before closing this long letter, I would express my 
‘opinion that to prevent main roots being cut, to en- 
sure the holes being the proper depth, to keep weed- 
ing contractors from scraping the earth off the roots 
of the trees, more supervision is wanted on the gen- 
erality of estates. This subject I would commend to 
the attention of Visiting Agents; I find that it pays 
to have plenty of supervision as the work costs less, 
and is undoubtedly better done.—I am, dear sir, yours 
faithfully, 
WILLIAM SAEONADIERE. 
COFFEK CULTIVATION : MANURING AND 
PRUNING IN HIGH DISTRICTS. 
June 19th, 1871. 
DEAR Sir,—lIf we take up a young coffee tree out 
of its hele in the field, we find as many feeding root- 
jets all the way down to the bottom ef the hole as 
near the surface, if the hole has been filled with sur- 
- face soil. If we take up a plant in a nursery we 
find the same, sofar down as the soil has been dug. 
If we take up an old coffee tree we find pretty much 
the same thing, so far as the hele it was planted 
in goes. If in cutting a road, or levelling, we cover 
up the surface seil round the coffee trees below with 
a foot or two of red sub-soil, we shall find, even many 
years afterwards, very few feeding roots near the 
surface of this sub-soil; but the old surface soil be- 
low, with perhaps the surface soil first thrown down 
from the cutting, will have plenty of them, though 
buried to a goed depth by pure sub-seil. If we dig 
up, in last year’s manuring, the cattle manure or pulp, 
buried in holes eighteen inches deep, we find it a 
_ mass of coffee rootlets at the full depth. When the 
manure is exhausted these rootlets of course disappear, 
being always formed where there is nourishhment, 
and they die eff just as the leaves, If the deep cofiee 
tap-roots be got dewn to, in a cutting, and any nourish- 
ing material be laid at the foot and within their 
reach, aS am accumulation ef earth ina drain at the 
foot of the bank, the tap-roots will produce feeding 
rootlets in this. All these things may be seen by 
most planters any day; why then are the feeding 
roots of coffee nearly all near the surface ? 
In young coffee the first grown larger roots are the 
dewnward growing or tap-roots, and there are at first 
no very large horizontal roots. The horizontal. roots 
near the surface acquire size afterwards, as the tree 
