dense for every
aspect, it is a slow grower, and it must be raised from young plants,
which are very liable to be attacked by stray cattle. Then when old, and
sometimes of medium age, it is very liable to be attacked by parasites;
and it produces annually a heavy[53] crop of fruit which costs money and
trouble to remove when immature, and which, if left to ripen, exhausts the
soil. It is, too, liable to suffer much from wind, and, in situations
which are at all windy, is not much to be relied on, as, when under the
influence of wind, the foliage becomes poor and scanty, and the tree
sometimes dies altogether. A study of the foliage will show, that in one
important particular, the five first-named trees are superior to jack, for
their leaves are attached to the twigs by long stalks, and much light is
thus admitted through the spaces between the stalks, while the leaves of
the jack are not only more numerous but are attached by short stalks, and
the foliage thus throws a very dark shade. Then jack, as it is an
evergreen, always affords a thick shade quite continuously, while the five
first-named trees not only cast a chequered shade, but, at certain periods
of the year, shed every leaf, leaving the tree quite bare for some time,
which is an advantage to the coffee. And besides, I have some reason to
suppose that the dense shade of the jack encourages rot (a disease
remarked upon further on), as one of my managers reports that he has
observed it under jack while it was not apparent on the coffee under other
kinds of shade trees. But on hot westerly and southerly slopes, and
especially where the soil is a bad retainer of moisture, and where the
gradient is rather steep, jack may be used with advantage, as in such
situations the heat is great and the light strong. I am therefore taking
steps to remove jack by degrees from all but southerly and westerly
exposures. I may add here that I have found that plants grown from seed
procured from the dry plains of the interior of Mysore, grow more than
twice as fast as plants raised from local seed. In concluding my remarks
on jack, I would particularly advise planters to remove the jack fruit
when immature, and put it into the manure heap, or bury it, as, if left on
the ground, it attracts cattle and village pigs into the plantation. The
fruit is large and full of a great number of seeds which must be an
exhaustive crop on the land. On the Nilgiri hills I am told by the
planters that t