According to local tradition, the coffee-plant was introduced into Mysore by a Mussulman pilgrim, named Baba Booden, who came from Arabia about two hundred years ago, and took up his abode as a hermit in the uninhabited hills in the Nuggur Division named after him, and where he established a college, which still exists, endowed by government. It is said that he brought some coffee-berries from Mocha, which he planted near to his hermitage, about which there are now to be seen some very old coffee-trees. However this may be, there is no doubt that the coffee-plant has been known in that neighbourhood from time immemorial, but the berry has never come into general use among the people for a beverage. It is only of late years that the coffee trade of these districts has become of any magnitude, or that planting has been carried to any important extent. The export of coffee from British India, which in 1851 was only 3239 tons, had increased in 1861 to 8535 tons; about one-fourth of this is shipped from Bombay, and nearly all the remainder from Madras. More than thirty years ago a few Europeans were engaged in coffee planting near Chickmoogloor, a few miles from the Bababooden Hills. About twenty years ago the plantation producing the well-known coffee called “Cannon’s Mysore,” and others, on the Memzera, or “Bad Mountain,” was commenced by two enterprising gentlemen. The success of these has induced many more Europeans to plant coffee there, and the consequence is that the coffee trade of Mysore bids fair to emulate that of Ceylon. It has given, also, an example to other parts of India, and the plant originally taken from the Bababooden Muth is now extending over tens of thousands of acres in Coorg, the Wynaad district, the Neilgherry Hills, and along the Western Ghauts, north and south. In Mysore the number of European coffee-planters has increased to about thirty, while the number of native planters is estimated at between three and four thousand. The average produce per acre in Mysore is probably not half that of Ceylon. Some attempts have been made to cultivate coffee in the open country, but without success; it seems to require forest land and considerable elevation and moisture. “Cannon’s Mysore” is grown on a range of hills from 3500 to 4000 feet above the sea, having the benefit of the south-west monsoon, which very seldom fails at all, never entirely, and of the tail-end of the north-east monsoon. This elevation gives a pleasant climate, well suited to Europeans. Several species of the genus Coffea (_C. alpestris_, _C. grumeloides_, and _C. Wightiana_) are indigenous to the Neilgherry Hills.