130 COFFEE CULTIVATION AND MANURING. 
soil of the surface. But to prevent the juices being 
washed away; to prevent the manure and rootlets in 
it from being dried up; to absorb the gases in hot 
weather ; to allow the roots to grow over as well as 
into the manure ; and for the proper rotting of the man- 
ure, it should be well covered. The looser and deeper 
the soil, the deeper may be the holes. In bad clay 
soils the holes would need to be shallow, but then 
the manure should be well covered by a heap of earth. 
Few will dispute that phosphates and mineral manures 
in general, when applied alone at least, should be put 
as near the surface as possible, so as to be kept moist 
and undisturbed. They can only do good to much 
purp se in connection with the organic matter of the 
surface soil, If mixed with plenty of organic manure 
they may be put decper. The scientific fact that 
plants absorb carbenic acid and nitrogen by their 
leaves is of little account in cultivation or manuring. 
As to fruit cultivation at home, gardeners take means 
to prevent their finer fruit trees growing roots down 
into a bed, or wet and cold sub-soil by paving at 
two or three feet below the surface. No doubt they 
find advantages in this; and one would suppose it 
would be an advantage to have all the growth of root 
kept within the good soil. We have plenty of coffee 
growing over sheet rock, and lots of trees growing 
over flat rocks and stones of all sizes, so that their 
tap-roots cannot go deep unless they get beyond the 
stone. I have not noticed anything very striking 
about such trees, generally, except that they suffer 
more in droughts. So far as feeding roots are con- 
cerned, we have them all on the surface without any 
trouble, though perhaps in dry weather they would 
be none the worse of being deeper. With fruit trees 
at home they are apt naturally to extend too deep, 
the manure is dug into the surface, or forked in, to 
bring them up. This is a very different thing in 
many ways from laying manure on the surface on a 
coffee estate; and digging over all the surface in our 
coffee would destroy all the feeding roots at the time. 
The covering of the soil round fruit trees at home is 
to save the roots from drought and frost. The man- 
ure so used is fresh; and though its juices enrich the 
soil, that is not the object of its application. For 
us to use manure in this way would, I think, be 
bad economy; but we do something similar with 
mana grass, &c. We have to economize our manure 
so as not merely to produce fine fruit from afew trees.” 
A ‘‘Superintendent-Proprietor” next replied very 
forcibly to the criticisms against his ‘‘Surface,” and 
in favour of ‘‘ Deep-hole,” Manuring :— 
*¢ All that we contend for is this, that wherever 
