8 4 
AMERICAN POMOIyOGlCAIy SOCIETY 
but usage is certainly an important factor. A good illustration of that can 
be found in the Islands of Trinidad and Granada, in both of which cacao is 
grown extensively. In Trinidad the first plantations were undoubtedly made 
by people from the mainland where cacao grows wild. The knowledge those 
people had of cacao was undoubtedly obtained from nature. They found the 
trees growing in the forest and they observed that the most favorable loca- 
tions were those where the trees were moderately shaded by forest trees. 
From that they concluded that cacao must be shaded and they planted it 
with shade. That usage has continued up to the present time and many of 
the old planters maintain that cacao cannot be successfully grown by any 
other method. 
In the neighboring Island of Granada sugar was the main crop, until 
about 1838, when slavery was abolished. Because of conditions, which need 
not be mentioned here, the slaves took up land and became horticulturists 
instead of continuing as day laborers on the plantations. One of the crops 
planted was cacao, and of course a number of the people knew how that was 
grown in Trinidad. Yet they did not have the fixed ideas founded on gen- 
erations of usage and they planted cacao trees as they planted any other 
fruit tree, with or without shade, as it happened to suit them. That estab- 
lished the usage for Granada and to-day practically all the plantations are 
without shade. 
One reason why I mention these points is that I want to make a plea 
for a broader education of horticultural teachers. I am sure that if more 
men could have a chance to travel and observe plants under conditions much 
different from the ordinary we would have less cock-sure, rule-of-thumb 
recommendations. I know that applies to myself. For instance, several 
years ago I had been led to believe that cacao could be grown in fairly humid 
climates only, and that the trees should necessarily be shaded, but after 
having seen a few trees in one of the dry Islands in the Leeward group I 
awoke to the fact that the cacao cultivation I had seen, practised and read 
about, was but a slight modification of nature’s method. I visited a man 
who knew nothing about cacao, but having received a few seeds from a 
friend in another Island he had planted them in his garden where h© watered 
when necessary. The trees grew well and bore well. They were small com- 
pared with trees in more humid climates when I saw them, but the crop 
produced was above that of the average tree of Trinidad. Now we may 
imagine that if this had happened a hundred years ago, when communica- 
tion was slow and infrequent and when books were not as plentiful as to- 
day, this man might have written an article on cacao, giving recommenda- 
tions that would have been entirely different from those a man from Trin- 
idad would have given. These men might have called one another prevar- 
icators, and yet they would each one have been entirely within the truth as 
far as they knew the truth. Another reason for dwelling on the foregoing is 
that the points mentioned have an intimate bearing, not alone on the present 
status of horticulture in the West Indies, but on the future development as 
well. 
The two questions: the man versus the land; and improved methods 
versus usage, we have to consider in all of the Islands. Other questions, 
