24 SHADE IN COFFEE CULTUEE. 



are dug, into which the fallen leaves are raked and covered. Another 

 variation of the same idea is described in the Calif ornian for November, 

 1892, as in use in Guatemala: 



On the Chocola plantation the holes, 6 feet square, are dug between the trees. 

 They are 2 feet deep on the lower side and 1 foot deep on the side toward the top of 

 the hill. 



When the heavy rains come the rich surface soil, instead of washing into the val- 

 leys and bottom lands below, is caught in these "traps," the water percolates 

 through the roots of the trees and finds its way out without carrying away the nour- 

 ishing properties of the soil and without exposing the roots of the trees. Each year 

 the holes are dug in a different place so that the earth is kept cultivated as well as if 

 a machine were run through it. 



SHELTER FROM WINDS. 



In elevated regions and exposed situations coffee is frequently 

 injured by the wind. In some localities in Ceylon where open culture 

 was practiced it was even customary to tie each tree to a stake to pre- 

 vent it being "wind- wrung,' 1 or killed by being whipped about until 

 the bark 'was bruised or worn away at the surface of the ground. To 

 avoid this danger the planting of wind-breaks or the leaving of strips 

 of the natural forest was found to be desirable and is now customary 

 even where the danger from wind is, to say the most, not serious. In 

 the Malay region, and particularly in Java, more and more emphasis 

 seems to have been laid upon this question of shelter, the coffee hav- 

 ing been found to do better in the neighborhood of protecting timber 

 growth, particularly when composed largely of the dadap or other 

 leguminous trees which are generally common in tropical forests. 

 Gradually the planting of such trees, though very wide apart in the 

 plantations, has come to be recognized as generally desirable, some 

 explaining the good effects as an extension of the advantages of shelter, 

 while others maintain that being shaded for an hour or two a day by the 

 feathery- leaves of a leguminous tree is really remarkably beneficial to 

 the coffee. In the cacao and coffee culture of the French West Indies 

 a similar idea of the desirability of protection against the wind has 

 resulted in the custom of planting hedges or wind-breaks of Erythrina 

 or Inga at distances of from 60 to 100 meters, in a direction transverse 

 to that of the prevailing winds. Plantations are also divided into rect- 

 angles by other hedges running perpendicular to these, and 30 meters 

 or more apart. Swietenia (mahogany) and Calophyllum are also 

 planted, though the last is known to waste much land, and the popu- 

 larity of the method probably rests to a considerable extent on the use 

 of leguminous trees. 



Similar wind-breaks have been advocated in the East Indies to pre- 

 vent the spread by air currents of the spores of the dreaded coffee 

 disease, and in parts of British India, as explained elsewhere, coffee is 

 actually planted in the forests to avoid this enemy. 



But even in regions where no serious results are to be feared from 



