COFFEE.
The coffee shrub is grown in sections of all tropical countries, producing yearly for the mar kets of the world 1,500,000,000 pounds of the beans. Brazil raises three fourths of this crop. TheUnited States consumes one half of the world's coffee crop. This astonishing demand places the average for each man, woman, and child in the country between eleven and twelve pounds. Great Britain consumes less than one pound per capita. So we are the great coffee-drinkers of the globe, as the English are the great tea-drinkers. Only Norway, Sweden, and Holland are addicted to the coffee habit to the extent that we Ameri cans are. Germany has a coffee average equal to England's consumption of tea.
Much tea is grown in little gardens. Coffee is grown on plantations of considerable extent. More than fifty thousand of these estates are the producers of the coffee crop, all employing cheap native labor, and using more or less modern methods and machinery in growing and preparing the crop for market.
The best coffee regions have an even tempera ture, far cooler than the tropics at sea level, and abundant rainfall. The right climatic conditions are best found on hills or mountain sides of about two thousand feet elevation. The altitude ranges, however, from one thousand to twenty-five hun dred feet. The thermometer must not fall below 6o ° F., and the soil must be rich and deep, with much humus, to hold moisture and to prevent washing when the hard rains come. Virgin for ests are cleared for coffee. In spite of the labor of getting trees off, the soil is rich and free from weeds, and such new plantations justify the hard work of clearing.
Now we come to the plant itself, with some curiosity, for few of us who read about it have ever seen it growing, or ever expect to. Ride up to one of the coffee plantations that covers the hillsides in Brazil or Porto Rico, and the courteous owner will send some competent person to show you around. He is pleased if you express a wish to see the industry of coffee-growing from the be ginning.
The seed bed is in a sheltered corner, with screens to keep both sun and wind from the plants that come up after the sowing of seeds. If the first whorl of leaves is showing, the plants are being reset in the nursery, where they have six inches of space around each one, and the most careful weeding, shading, and protection from winds. As the stems lengthen, the plants are
gradually hardened by leaving off the artificial shade, and when the fourth leaf whorl is de veloped, the plant is lifted, with all the undis turbed earth the spade can carry, and set in its place in the field.
Coffee plants are perennials, of course. They have woody stems that branch into a round shrub form, and glossy leaves that come out in pairs along the straight, slender twigs, like leaflets on a walnut tree.
The beauty of these little trees you will remark as they stand under the shade of the nurse trees, with which young orchards are usually set. But wait till you go over into a tract of three-year-old plants. The white flowers shine like stars, and breathe a sweet fragrance. They appear at the axils of the leaves, where they are not at all numerous, but quite large. This is their first bloom. Three times a year, from this time for ward, the plant blooms, the flowers followed by fruit that takes eight months to mature. This is why the older bushes have both flowers and fruit in the same cluster, apparently.
Light crops are borne by coffee plants up to the sixth year, when the normal habit of bearing is reached, and a pound of dried berries are ex pected as the yield of the average tree. The berries ripen unevenly, so the crop is picked by hand, and very carefully, so as not to injure the berries that are coming on. The harvest time lasts four months. The picking costs $1.zo to $1.40 per hundredweight of berries in Porto Rico. Whole families turn into the fields at the coffee harvest, and it is as jolly a season as cotton picking time in the Southern States, and the hop-gathering in New York State. The West Indian negro works for the munificent sum of 35 cents to 50 cents a day, and boys get from 10 cents up! The fruits of the coffee plant are at first green, then yellow, then red. At this stage they are full grown and look just like cherries. These "cherries" are not good to eat, though they are fleshy and red. As they change to dark wine color they are ready to pick.