188: MANURING COFFEE. 
be interesting, although he does not state where it 
was grown :— 
Raw coffee. Roasted coffee. 
Water ... oo ent BIG 0°36 
Cane sugar old Le RSLS 1°84 
Caffeine ap: Tp AO 1:06 
Fat ab ae nigel bY bay: 8:30 
Gluten ..: ni .. 10.68 12°03 
*BHxtractive matter ... 14°03 26°28 
Cellulose, &c. ... | 42°36 44°96 
Ash at Ps Le was Og 517 
100:00 100:00 
* Caramel, gum, tannin, &c. 
M. CocHran. 
From Mr. J. B. LAwEs. 
1 have recently seen an article in your paper of the 
16th June headed ‘‘ Potash as the Dominant Element - 
in the Crop, a Necessary Ingredient in Coffee Manures.” 
A few remarks I venture to make may be of some 
service to those who cultivate this valuable product. 
The term ‘‘dominant” is somewhat misleading and 
possibly I may not fully understand what it implies. 
ft will, however, assume its meaning to be that land 
under the ordinary circumstances of coffee cultivation 
is more likely to be deficient in potash than in any 
other element of plant food, consequently an applica- 
tion of a salt of potash would produce a more bene- 
ficial effect than any other separate ingredient. In 
this sense a salt of ammonia may be considered the 
dominant element in a manure for wheat. We have 
applied ammonia for 36 years in succession to wheat, 
and the produce is still higher than the produce ob-. 
tained by the application of potash, soda, magnesia 
and superphosphate of lime without ammonia. The 
reason why ammonia or nitric acid is so superior 
its effect upon this crop to all other manure ingre- 
' dients has been explained by me elsewhere. As ex- 
periments similar to my own have not been carried 
out on coffee, we can only reason upon the probabili- 
ties of one or other of the various elements of plant 
food being dominant, and I should not be very much 
surprised if further experiments proved that no special 
ingredient had a predominant influence over the others. ~ 
My reason for this conclusion is founded upon the 
fact that coffee grows up as a perennial shrub, and 
is not ar annual plant like many of our ordinary cul- 
tivated plants ; its roots therefore penetrate deeper 
and have more complete possession of the soil. As- 
suming that five cwts. of berries is a fair crop, the 
