There is a notion in Hayti that the coffee crop will come to an end by the old trees dying out. I was told this twenty years ago, and the story is still repeated; but any one who observantly travels in the interior would find the old trees surrounded by younger ones that spring from the teeming soil from seeds scattered by the wind or rain. The idea, also prevalent among many foreigners in Hayti, that the coffee collected now is taken from the original trees planted by the French, is untenable. As soon as the civil war caused by King Christophe’s assumption of power ceased (1820), a marked progress took place in the production of coffee. There is another fact which is also forgotten; coffee-plants in wet tropical countries generally bear from twenty to twenty-five years; therefore their age may be taken at about thirty years. If this statement be correct, the trees must have been renewed three times since the old colonial days. Most of the coffee plantations I saw in Hayti contained shrubs that have seldom exceeded from seven to ten feet in height, though on the way to Kenskoff I noticed many from twelve to fifteen feet. At Furcy and at La Selle we saw some very good plants, properly cleaned and attended to, and kept at a suitable height for picking the berries. Mackenzie noticed, in 1827, whole sides of mountains covered with coffee-trees of spontaneous growth, two-thirds of the produce being lost for want of hands to gather it. So prolific, he says, were the bushes, that many which were carefully tended produced from five to six lbs. and some were known to give nine lbs. I have never noticed the peasantry use more than the _mauchette_, a sort of chopper almost as long as a sword, whilst cleaning their coffee plantations. They simply cut down the weeds and creepers, but never stir the soil around the roots with a hoe. The use of manure is unknown. The only preventable cause for any decline in the coffee crop would be the neglect following the withdrawal of the peasantry to take part in civil wars and revolutions, and the lazy habits engendered by camp life. When riding through coffee plantations after the civil wars of 1868 and 1869, I noticed a marked deterioration from 1864. Creepers of every description were suffered to grow over and almost choke the plants, and poor crops were sometimes the result. In Geffrard’s time, though the cultivation was slovenly, efforts were made to keep the plants clean, and during the quiet four years of Nissage-Saget’s presidency the peasantry returned to their old habits. Notwithstanding this occasional neglect, there appears no progressive falling off in the crops; they vary as before, but on the whole keep up to the average.