CORFEE CULTIVATION AND MANURING. 119 
drain, which the quantity of stnff thus brought down 
will most likely choke also. But on places known 
to me, now nearly twenty years old, there are scarcely 
any signs of wash, and there are no wash holes on 
them and very few drains, except roadside drains. 
‘Lhe reason of this is clean weeding (not scraping), anil 
letting the prunings and fallen leaves lie on the sur- 
face of the ground. Under any considerable accumu- 
lation of these, the feeding rootlets grow out of the 
ground and through amongst the rotting leaves. 
With regard to the idea of forcing out the blossom 
earlier by early pruning, I have never found it so. 
IT long ago made experiments to try this, and I think 
I have pruned in about all the months of the year. 
This season I began a series of experiments in the 
middle of December, when crop here was iittle more 
than begun. Since thenI have pruned experimental 
lots each month. In the first of these, the greater 
part of the crop had to be pruned off, and a good 
dealin February, and even in March. The first blos- 
som on all of these too came on the same day as the 
first blossom on all the surrounding coffee, and there 
was not more of it on any of the pruned experiments. 
The second blossom also came on the same day, on 
both pruned and unpruned, and looked, when out, 
if anything, less on the earlier pruned lots. A third 
blossom has now been out, also about equal, and 
on the same days all over. There are, no doubt, ad- 
vantages in early pruning, however, in most coffee: 
though I would not sacrifice scarcely any crop to be 
a little earlier. Ido not mean to discuss the advant- 
ages here. They are mostly in the year after with 
me. But unripe berries late on a branch seem to 
retard the blossoming of its own extremity, if there 
ba fresh blossoming wood there. 
Xe, 
WHAT IS A WEED? 
A planting correspondent writes :—‘‘I enclose an 
article clipped from the Melbourne Leader of the 25th 
March, on ‘What is a weed,’ which I think those 
of our coffee cultivators who are constantly in the 
habit of bagging their weeds (under pretence of eradic- 
ating them) will do well to study.” . 
WEEDS. 
Sir,—Among your notices to correspondents in The 
Leader of the 11th, I was a good deal surprised to 
read that weeds did not impoverish soil. It staggered 
my ideas a bit, for ever since I wasa boy, and used 
to spud up docks and thistles, I have believed as I 
