Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

42 THE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY Coast, San Thome, and Santo Domingo, the use of shade trees is the common practice. All the finest shade trees belong to the Leguminosae: in the West Indies and other places the vermilion-flowered Erythrina (Bois Immortelle or “ mother of cacao ”) is generally used and adds to the beauty of the plantations. It is planted at every third stäke, that is, 45 ft. to 54 ft. apart. Only in a few countries are shade trees used which give a saleable crop ; thus in Ceylon some use Para rubber and in Java the “ kapok ” tree (Erioden-dron anfractuosuni), which yields a silky fibre used for stuffing pillows and mattresses. When shade trees and cacao have been planted, and the roads made, and trenches with a V-section dug, and weeding attended to, etc., etc., the planter can begin to consider whether he will fork round the plants, whether he will use manure, and how he will train up the tree in the way it should go. In most producing areas the forking or hoeing of the soil on cacao plantations is considered entirely unnecessary, or, in some cases, even harmful. However, planters in some of the more progressive countries (Grenada, Ceylon, and Jamaica) are at one with the poet who says, “ You tickle the earth with a hoe and it laughs with a harvest.” In Surinam and Trinidad, though approved, it is little practised because of the high price of labour ; in the latter country forking costs from 13s. (a halfpenny a tree) to about £1 per acre. Manuring. Taking the industry as a whole very little manuring is done, and so rapid is the decom-position of the soil in the tropics that many cacao plantations have flourished for years without any kind of manuring whatever. Whilst “ mulching ” is fairly common, and pen or farmyard manure is used when easily available, the use of artificial manures is altogether