124 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ava., 1898. 
may. say I have been asked over and over again, What are the profits? 
We all know that profits hang upon a thousand matters. What may 
be profitable one season may be unprofitable in another. When I have finished 
I shall be pleased to answer as many questions as you may ask, and sheuld I 
miss anything I hope you will question me as closely as possible. What you 
may have seen in the case of one or two trees, or a dozen or so, planted under 
particularly fayourable circumstances, sheltered from the winds, in moist 
localities, in sunny aspects, grown in gardens, tended and nursed, is no criterion 
of what a plantation will do. When you have 1,000 trees to look after it is 
quite a different matter, and in this connection I may say that data that one 
gets from what is written of ‘coffee production in foreign countries cannot be 
taken as safe datafor us to go upon, and I am backed out in this by Mr. 
Hepburn in his experience in the West Indian Islands. He has said to me to-day 
that he has found in Queensland that his West Indian experience is not always 
reliable. Methods that will do there will not doin every case in this colony,and 
his words were to this effect: The general principles of cultivation hold good 
all over the world, but the climatic vicissitudes and the adaptability of the 
plants themselves have all to be relearned when you come to Queensland. Now 
to commence where I commenced, and you will pardon me if Iseem to go too far 
down into it, but I shall assume that you know nothing at all about the matter. 
In the first place I was very careful to select a piece of land sufficiently high 
above the sea-level, and near enough to the sea to get the benefit of the sea 
air, with a somewhat moist atmosphere, the right position, and the right 
texture of soil. In doing so I bought a piece of property which stands some- 
thing like 400 feet above the sea, and which is about a mile from the sea. 
The whole of the intervening country is open—that is, from my place you can 
look right over the trees into the sea. It is red voleanie soil, and is all the 
same, being characteristic of red volcanic ridges. It is very friable; so friable, 
indeed, that vou can force an ordinary bar down three or four fect into it in 
ordinary weather. I had observed coffee ever since | wasaboy. We had coffee 
growing in 1863 on the banks of the Mary, but this finally got carried away by 
flood. I have watched it ever since, and I may say it is a very old Jove of mine. 
In 1888, when I travelled through the district where L come from, I advocated 
among the farmers the growing of coffee. Icame across an ex-Ceylon planter, 
and when I spoke of coffee-growing he laughed and said,“ You cannot grow coffee 
in Queensland.” ‘“ Well,’ I said, ‘I have seen growing here what is said to be 
coffee’ ; but he replied, “‘ You cannot grow it.” This same gentleman wrote 
to me some days ago asking for 14 lb. of coffee seed. So he was mistaken. I 
gota friend who gave me 100 trees, and it is upon the results obtained from those 
100 trees that I shall now speak. I prepared my beds in this wise: I very 
carefully dug the soil to a depth of from 16 to 18 inches, forked it, and was 
very careful to take out every root, for I knew that I should have to shift the 
plants, and I did not want anything to interfere with them in the removal, for 
I had heard that to injure the taproot of the coffee-tree would do the tree 
serious injury. I levelled down the ground fairly level, just as you would 
level an ordinary seed bed, laid off the beds 8 feet wide by 6 or 7 feet long, 
with paths between. Having laid off the beds, 1 put ina number of forked 
sticks, leaving the forks about 5 feet out of the ground, and put saplings on 
these forks. Over the top of the latter I strewed dried banana-leaves, not 
altogether intercepting the sun, but making a fair shade. To keep the leayes 
in their place, 1 laid on afew more saplings. These lasted twelve months 
longer than I wanted them. Please remember that there is technically a 
difference between berry and cherry. Cherry is the purple fruit from the tree. 
Berry is the prepared berry ready for market. Parchment is after the coffee 
has been pulped and dried. It is then surrounded by a parchment-like 
covering, and in that stage it is called parchment. Then I separated the 
berries by pressing them, and took them out; planted them very carefully in 
the ground by means of a small dibble. I put them down just about 1 inch 
or 1} inches, and took care to put the round side up and the flat side down, for 
I noticed the germ came out from the flat side. So that in order that the 
