136 HISTORY OF THE [bookv, 
eighteen or twenty inches high, to cut one of 
them down. The other two, if they spread diffe¬ 
rent ways, are sometimes suffered to remain; but 
it seldom happens that all the nuts, or even more 
than one of them, will take root, which is the rea¬ 
son of planting three in a hole. 
The fifth year the tree begins to bear, and the 
eighth attains its full perfection. It then produces 
in general two crops of fruit in the year, yielding 
at each, from ten to twenty pounds weight, ac¬ 
cording to the soil and seasons; and it will some¬ 
times continue bearing for twenty years; but the 
same delicacy of stamina which marks its infancy, 
is visible in all the stages of its growth. It is ob¬ 
noxious to blights, and shrinks from the first ap¬ 
pearance of drought. It has happened that the 
greatest part of a whole plantation of cacao trees 
have perished in a single night, without any visible 
cause. Circumstances of this nature, in early 
times, gave rise to many superstitious notions con¬ 
cerning this tree, and, among others, the appear¬ 
ance of a comet was always considered as fatal to 
the cacao plantations. 
In spite however of the influence of comets, and 
notwithstanding the care and precaution that are 
requisite in the first establishment of a cacao plan¬ 
tation, it is certain that the cultivation of this plant 
was both extensive and successful in the British 
sugar islands, for many years after they had be- 
