ny excellent and valuable estates, though it was
plain to me that, from the more weakly, or perhaps I should rather say
less robust, character of the shoots, and the appearance of the soil, it
had, as a rule, much less growing power in it, and would consequently
require more manure, than the deep and heavier soils of Mysore. But these
soils in the Bamboo district, though lighter in character, are of course
(and this is a fact of no small importance) more easily worked than those
of Mysore. The next point that attracted my attention was the shade, and
of the numerous estates that I saw in the Bamboo district there were only
two that at all came up to my idea of what a well shaded property ought to
be. I could see little signs of the shade being varied in kind and
quantity to suit the various aspects, and many trees were preserved which
were merely throwing shadow, not on to the coffee, but on to adjacent
trees. Then I found that in one excellent piece of young coffee the shade
had been planted in lines running from east to west, instead of being
closely planted in lines from north to south (_vide_ chapter on shade).
The shade, too, generally speaking, was far too largely composed of one
kind of tree,--the Atti-mara (_Ficus glomerata_)--and finally this tree,
the defects of which I have remarked upon in my chapter on shade, was
badly managed by being trimmed up to a considerable height above the
ground. The result of this was that on land on which there was an enormous
number of trees there was far too little shade, and a forester fresh from
England would never have imagined that the planters had intended to grow
umbrageous trees for the double purpose of lowering the temperature of the
plantation and sheltering the coffee from sun and parching winds, but
would have supposed that they were engaged in growing timber for sale. I
saw land which, I feel sure, had at least three times the number of trees
that would have been sufficient to shade it fully, had they been properly
treated. Such a number of trees throw out, of course, a corresponding
number of large roots, and one planter told me that in some instances
coffee was being killed by the masses of Atti root in the land. As regards
shade, then, there is much room for improvement in Coorg, and especial
attention should be paid to this in the Bamboo district which has suffered
so much from Borer. This pest, we know, thrives best under warm and dry
conditions, and it is theref