Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom - Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on by P. L. Simmonds
page 71 of 1438 (04%)
soil; and about thirteen or fourteen feet in soil of inferior quality.

This is almost the only tree in nature to which the enlivening beams
of the sun are obnoxious. It requires to be sheltered from their
ardour; and the mode of combining this protection with the principles
of fertility, forms a very essential part of the skill which its
cultivation demands. The cacao tree is mingled with other trees, which
guard it from the rays of the sun, without depriving it of the benefit
of their heat. The _Erythrina_ and the banana are employed for this
purpose. The latter, by the rapidity of its growth, and the magnitude
of its leaves, protect it for the first year. The erythrina endures at
least as long as the cacao; it is not every soil, however, that agrees
with it. It perishes after a while in sandy and clayey ground, but it
flourishes in such as combine those two ingredients.

In the Antilles this protection cannot be given to cacao, as it would
expose the plantation to destruction by every hurricane. Besides, the
cacao succeeds but indifferently there, and is much less oily than in
other parts.

The quality of the soil, and the species of the erythrina, should
determine the distance at which they ought to be placed. That kind
which the Spaniards call _bucare anaveo_, is planted in a fertile
soil, at the distance of two alleys, that is to say, at each second
range of cacao trees. That which they call _bucare peonio_, is placed
at three alleys in good soils (about forty-eight French feet).

The former species of erythrina is that which elevates itself the
highest. The second species has many thorns, the upper surface of the
leaf is darker and the lower whiter. Both kinds should be cut in the
DigitalOcean Referral Badge