Chile, Paraguay, and
Argentina. In Uruguay the climate is altogether unsuitable for it.

Argentina and Paraguay each have small growing districts. In the first
named, only the provinces of Salta and Jujuy have, at the latest
reports, a little more than 3,000 acres under cultivation. In Paraguay
some householders have grown coffee in their yards solely for their own
use. In the Paraguayan district of Altos, north of Asuncion, a small
group of plantations was started before the outbreak of the World War,
and produced about 300,000 pounds of coffee in a year.

CEYLON. Coffee planting in Ceylon was an important industry for a
century, until the so-called Ceylon leaf disease attacked the
plantations in 1869, and a few years later had practically destroyed all
the trees of the country. Although coffee raising has continued since
then, there has been, especially since the beginning of the twentieth
century, a steady decline in acreage. There were 4,875 acres under
cultivation in 1903, 2,433 acres in 1907, 1,389 in 1912, and 941.5 in
1919. Only 2,200 pounds were produced in 1917. However, the climate and
soil of Ceylon seem adapted to coffee culture, and the experimental
stations at Peradeniya and Anuradhapura have been experimenting in
recent years with _robusta_, _canephora_, _Ugandae_, and a _robusta_
hybrid for the purpose of reviving the industry in the country.

Ceylon is one of the oldest coffee-growing countries, the Arabs having
experimented with it there, according to legend, long before the
Portuguese seized the island in 1505. The Dutch, who gained control in
1658, continued the cultivation, and in 1690 introduced more systematic
methods. They sent a few pounds in 1721 to Amsterdam, where the coffee
brought a higher price than Java or Mocha. However, it was not until
after the British occupied the island in 1796, that coffee growing was
carried on extensively. The first British-owned upland plantation was
started in 1825 by Sir Edward Barnes; and for more than fifty years
thereafter coffee was one of the island's leading products. An orgy of
speculation in coffee growing in Ceylon, in which L5,000,000 sterling
are said to have been invested, culminated in 1845 in the bursting of
the coffee bubble, and hundreds were ruined. The peak of the export
trade was reached in 1873, when 111,495,216 pounds of coffee were sent
out of the country. Even then, the plantations were suffering severely
from the leaf disease, which