roduction of the tree into the western
hemisphere. Its cultivation was started there about 1715, but the trees
were largely permitted to fall into a wild natural state, and little
attention was given to them or to the handling of the crop. Fertility of
soil, climate, and moisture are favorable, and the advancement of the
industry has been retarded only by the political conditions of the negro
republic and a general lack of industry and enterprise on the part of
the people.

Haiti is an island with three names. Haiti is used to describe the
island as a whole, and to denote the Republic of Haiti, which occupies
the western third of its area. The island is also known as Santo
Domingo, and San Domingo, names likewise applied to the Dominican
Republic which occupies the eastern two-thirds of the land unit.

Plantations now existing in Haiti have had, with rare exceptions, a life
of more than ten or twenty years. It is estimated that they cover about
125,000 acres, with about 400 trees to the acre.

When the French acquired the island in 1789, the annual production was
88,360,502 pounds. During the following century that amount was not
approached in any year, the nearest to it being 72,637,716 pounds in
1875. The lowest annual production was 20,280,589 pounds in 1818. The
range during the hundred years, 1789-1890, was, with the exceptions
noted, from 45,000,000 to 71,000,000 pounds.

MEXICO. Opinions differ as to the exact date when coffee was introduced
into Mexico. It is said to have been transplanted there from the West
Indies near the end of the eighteenth century. A story is current that a
Spaniard set out a few trees, on trial, in southern Mexico, in 1800, and
that his experiments started other Mexican planters along the same line.
Coffee was grown in the state of Vera Cruz early in the nineteenth
century; and the books of the Vera Cruz custom house record that 1,101
quintals of coffee were exported through that port during the years
1802, 1803, and 1805.

In the Coatepec district, which eventually became famous in the annals
of Mexican coffee growing, trees were planted about the year 1808. Local
history says that seeds were brought from Cuba by Arias, a partner of
the house of Pedro Lopez, owners of the large _hacienda_ of Orduna in
Coatepec. The seeds were given to a priest, Andres Dominguez, who sowed
them near Teocelo. When he had succeeded in starting seedlings, he gave
them away to other planters there-about