JAMAICA. 



BULLETIN 



OF THE 



BOTANICAL DEPARTMENT. 



Vol. VIII 



New Series.] OCTOBER, 1901. ~ ;*. IA 



J Part 10j 



THE BANANA SOILS OF JAMAICA. 



By H. H. Cousins, M.A., F.C.S., GDvernment Analytical and Agri- 

 cultural Chemist. 



I. Portland and St. Mary. 



The value of soil analysis as a practical guide to the cultivator has 

 dften been exaggerated, and 4 it would be a most unsound policy to at- 

 tempt to deduce practical measures from analyses only. When such 

 analyses are carefully carried out with the precautions and methods 

 which the latest experience of Agricultural Chemists have devised, and 

 interpreted, not in an absolute, but in a comparative manner ; and fur- 

 ther when associated with field experiments and careful records of crop 

 returns under various treatments, soil analyses may be of the greatest 

 value in giving a short cut to the vital conditions of economic produc- 

 tion. 



In publishing these first results, it must be understood that they 

 are but the preliminaries to a wider survey of the soil conditions of 

 Jamaica and that they will receive a more practical interpretation in 

 the light of the field experiments which the Board of Agriculture has 

 now instituted to cover all the chief cultivations of Jamaica. 



The figures and the observations that follow them in each case speak 

 fer themselves. The soils from Burlington and Quebec Park are truly 

 extraordinary. Despite a century of cane cultivation and a long series 

 of banana crops, these soils are still in a very high state of fertility. 

 'Tomb Piece' at Burlington is an agricultural curiosity. It is at least 

 30 times as rich as good average wheat land in England. 



The Phosphoric Acid is, I believe, a record. The amount was so 

 enormous that the analysis was repeated and carefully cheeked before 

 it was accepted. There is a mine of wealth in these soils which needs 

 but energy and enterprise to dig it out and realise its possibilities. 



