on increase in the more remote forests
into which it has been driven back, and from thence spread into other
parts of the country.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] "Manual of Coorg," compiled by Rev. G. Richter, Principal, Government
Central College, Mercara. Mangalore, 1870.

[49] The late Mr. William Pringle, who, after leaving Coorg, wrote in
1891, for the "Madras Mail," some interesting and suggestive papers on the
cultivation of coffee.

[50] I make this statement on the authority of Mr. Meynell (_vide_
preface), and it is, no doubt, the result of his experience in the Bamboo
district, but his estimate could hardly, I should say, apply to the
estates I visited in North Coorg.

CHAPTER X.

COFFEE PLANTING IN MYSORE.

After a long and attentive observation of the various occupations of life,
I have no hesitation in saying that, for one who has to earn his bread
somewhere, the life of a planter in Mysore, if not the very pleasantest
and most interesting (and as far as my own experience goes it is both) in
the world, is assuredly one of the most agreeable occupations that anyone
of intelligence, industry, and active habits, and fond of sport and an
independent and open-air life, could betake himself to. It will be
observed that I place intelligence in the van, and I do so because, though
there is some truth in the native proverb which declares that, "with
plenty of manure even an idiot may be a successful agriculturist," I know
of no occupation that calls for a greater degree of intelligence and
steady application than that of a planter in Mysore, or any district where
shade trees are required. For where the planter has only to deal, as he
has in Ceylon, with the coffee on his land and nothing else, the business,
though even then of course requiring considerable skill and intelligence,
is comparatively speaking a simple one. But in Mysore the necessity of
providing shade for the coffee gives us at once an additional and highly
complicated business in the planting and management of the shade trees,
and their selection and distribution to suit the various soils, aspects
and gradients we have to deal with. Then the fact of having shade trees,
which of course take up much of the manure intended for the coffee, makes
the application of the manure, and especially the quantity to be put down
at a time, a matter of constant doubt, for on the one hand, how much do
the shade trees not rob us of, and on the other hand, how much