53 



without some difficulty and a voluminous correspondence, that the only 

 conclusion possible was that the canes had been submitted to analysis at 

 various periods of their growth y consequently the results could not be ex- 

 pected to coincide. 



More recently I undertook an extensive series of analyses of the 

 coffee- plant and the soils on which it grew. This furnished me with 

 the counterpart of the above proposition. I was requested to make 

 these analyses in order to ascertain what materials the coffee- tree took 

 from the soils, what the soils supplied in largest quantities, what they 

 were deficient in, and what kind of manure would be requisite to in- 

 crease the crops of berries without impoverishing the soil of the estates. 



I sought in vain through the works and journals which I possess, or 

 have access to, for some analysis of the kind. It was only when the 

 work was finished and my results obtained that a friend found for me 

 an old analysis of coffee-berries, made by an eminent chemist about 

 thirty years ago, and the figures coincided in a most remarkable manner 

 with those I had just obtained. Now these coffee-berries had been 

 grown in the Wed Indies some thirty years before, and mine came from 

 Ceylon ! It then struck me for the first time that the analyses of the 

 mineral ingredients of plants burnt after they have arrived at maturity 

 must generally coincide, and can alone teach us accurately what any 

 plant ta/ces from the soil. The reason that the analyses of these eoffee- 

 berries gave results so precisely similar was that the berry in both 

 instances was ripe. 



Again, I was exceedingly interested to find that the analysis of the 

 ash of some Virginian tobacco grown in the Royal Botanical Society's 

 Gardens in London, and kindly forwarded to me by Colonel Piatt, 

 presented precisely the same composition as that grown in America ; so 

 that neither change of soil nor of climate had influenced the relative 

 proportion of mineral matter and organic matter, nor that of the 

 principal ingredients. The plant had taken from the soil of London 

 the same materials, and in the same relative proportions that it is found 

 to take them from the soil of Virginia. 



IV. 



In order to appreciate the actual state of the cane soils in our West 

 Indian Colonies we cannot do better than consider, in the first instance, 

 the composition of two soils (chosen with care from a considerable 

 number that have been analysed by me within the last few years), re- 

 presenting a new soil and an old soil. The first, A, is from an estate in 

 Jamaica now under canes for the first time ; the other, B, is from a 

 plantation in Demerara which has been worked more than fifteen years 

 consecutively. It is not difficult to see how valuable a lesson is to be 

 learnt from these two analyses alone, but some others are given further 

 on. 



Let me simply add that to the eye of the most experienced planter or 

 chemist there was scarcely any appreciable difference in the aspect of 

 these two soils ; the sample A was merely a clay of rather darker colour 

 than B, but nothing in their external appearance could have indicated 

 the widely-different composition which they gave on being carefully 

 analysed : — 



