The Cultivation of Liberian Coffee. 303 
that the high trees are fruitful only at the top, the lower 
branches remaining for the most part sterile. 
The return from an acre of land varies much, of course) 
according to the nature of the soil, and the condition of 
the cultivation. Mr. D. MORRIS gives from three to 
lour hundred weights as the average, whilst the Nether- 
land Consul in Liberia, as well as some Ceylon planters, 
speak of thirteen hundred weights as a possible yield. 
Liberian coffee commences to ripen in Dominica, about 
December, and goes on ripening for several months, 
thus entering upon the time of flowering. Great care, 
therefore, is required in picking, lest the flowers and 
flower buds be rubbed off. I find^ that a woman can 
easily pick three bushels a day ; but, as the labourers 
are quite new to the work, it is expected that larger 
quantities may be picked when they become dextrous. 
The hard fibrous pericarp renders pulping operations 
far more difficult than in the case of the Arabian Coffee, 
and I have been put to a good deal of trouble and ex- 
pense in my experiments in the way of machinery. I 
find GORDON'S ' breast-pulper' quite useless ; the old 
'' rattle-trap' described by LABORIE answers fairly well 
but the machine is now very hard to get. My experi- 
ments were made on a venerable affair that had seen 
its best days fifty years ago, when Dominica was one 
of the principal coffee producing countries. As I was 
unable to get one of these machines, I ordered from 
Ceylon a disc-pulper specially made by Messrs. WALKER 
and Company of that island for the Liberian Coffee. It 
is an admirable piece of mechanism, and it pulps the 
berry well; but it does not separate pulp from seed, 
and a sieve is required to work with it, I am now 
