140 COFFEE CULTIVATION AND MANURING. 
years I have had many opportunities of testing the 
merits of diff-rent artificial manures, aud I find, from 
personal experience ciiefly, that the use of artificial 
manures alone is undoubtedly very prejudicial to the 
coffee trees on old estates, I have seen isolated in- 
stances where no bad effects have accrued as yet from 
the use of bones and poouac, but they are so few in 
number, that I have no hesitation in advocating great 
caution in the use of such stimulants alone. At the 
same time, when mixed m certain proportions with 
any bulky vegetable matter decomposed with cattle 
manures and pulp, they constitu'e in my opinion the 
sum-total of economical manuring, giving to the tree 
all that robust and vigorous appearan:e as if cattle 
manure alone hal been applied, produce good steady 
crops, while the tree does not suffer at the end of 
the season, as 1s tbe result when urtificial manure 
alone is used. If an estate be capable of manuring 
say 30 aeres annually with cattle manure and pulp, 
the quantity s>» used would, if mixed with a combina- 
tion of artificial manure and any vegetable matter, 
be sufficient to manure, In my opinion, 90 acres, at 
ue increase in the relaive cost per acre, while the 
compost would not be in any way inferior to the 
cattle manure and pulp by theniselves. 
‘«Superphosphates of lime, castor poonae, special 
mixtures, sombreorum, and other manufactured man- 
ures, all excellent and powerful fertilizers, ought, if 
applied to old coffee, to be treated in the same man- 
ner as bones and poonac.. To hope to renovate old 
— wewoevuucr without bulky manures is both 
against theory and practice, but by all means try and 
reduce the quantity to a minimum. Not many years 
ago I saw three to seven baskets of rich cattle dung 
thrown into each manure hole, and this done by two 
of the oldest and most experienced planters in the 
island. The treatment of old and yvuung coffee ought. 
to be very different as regards manuring. Take two 
fields of coffee growing on the same slope and soil,— 
one 26 years old, the other rising seven, we find the 
young coffee with roots all entire taking strength from 
all parts of the soil equally around, and the soil it- 
self giving out a fair supply of nourishment. On the 
other hand we see the old coffee with roots partly 
bared by the weeding scraper, washed by the rain 
portions entirely cut away by the mamoty, and the 
soil impoverished by constant cropping.  Admittine 
those two fields as fair average of old and young coffee, 
it seems to me that the action of the trees upon the 
manure would be very different. The young tree would 
not require to depend so much upon the manure to 
ripen the crop as the old,—surrounded as the latter 
