AlAiXi9<eym'}     Coffee:  Its  History  and  Commerce.  363 
coffee  to  the  world  at  large.  The  use  of  those  names  has,  in  a  great 
measure,  helped  and  fixed  the  prestige  which  had  already  attached 
to  Arabia  as  the  original  source  of  commercial  supply.  At  the 
present  day  Arabia  produces  but  a  small  and  unimportant  part  of 
the  world's  supply,  while  in  Abyssinia  coffee  has  no  importance 
whatever.  Liberian  coffee,  as  its  name  truly  tells,  originated  in 
Liberia,  and  grows  wild  throughout  that  region. 
(2)  Spread  of  Cultivation. — The  Dutch  introduced  coffee-growing 
in  the  East  Indies,  and  began  to  send  coffee  to  market  from  there 
about  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  171 8  they  began 
growing  coffee  in  Surinam,  South  America,  but  general  cultivation 
of  coffee  in  the  new  world  is  not  believed  to  have  spread  much  from 
that  source.  It  is  generally  believed  that  Martinique  is  the  point 
from  which  cultivation  spread  on  all  sides,  and  that  most  of  the 
coffee  trees  in  America  are  descended  from  a  slip  which  Le  Clieu,  a 
French  naval  officer,  brought  to  Martinique  from  the  Paris  botanic 
garden  in  1720.  At  the  present  time  the  number  of  coffee  trees  in 
Mexico,  Central  America,  South  America  and  West  Indies  is  esti- 
mated at  about  1,000,000,000. 
(3)  Present  Coffee  Regions. — At  the  present  day  coffee  is  cultivated 
generally  throughout  the  tropics,  viz.,  the  lower  half  of  Mexico,  all 
of  Central  America,  the  West  Indies,  Northern  South  America — on 
the  west  coast  as  far  as  Peru,  on  the  east  almost  to  Northern  Argen- 
tina— West  Africa,  East  Africa,  Southern  India,  Java,  Borneo,  Phil- 
ippines, Hawaiian  Islands,  etc.  Table  No.  3,  showing  the  sources 
of  United  States  imports  for  1900,  will  give  a  fair  idea  of  the  relative 
importance  of  the  various  coffee  countries. 
IV.  CULTIVATION. 
(1)  Arrangement. — The  trees  are  planted  in  rows  6  to  10  feet 
apart.  On  many  plantations  the  plants  are  placed  near  each  other 
in  the  row,  the  resulting  growth  being  more  or  less  hedge-like. 
(2)  Shading. — To  prevent  the  soil  from  baking  and  cracking  and 
thus  breaking  the  tender  rootlets,  it  is  a  common  practice  to  plant 
quickly  growing  shade  trees  among  the  coffee.  Bananas  and  rubber 
trees  are  much  used  for  this  purpose,  as  being  valuable  not  only  for 
their  shade  but  also  for  their  products.  Among  others,  the  legumes 
are  favorites  because  the  folding  of  their  leaves  at  night  permits  the 
damp  air  to  reach  the  soil.    Frequently  the  coffee  plantation  is 
