In harvesting, the shoots are not all cut at one time, but by degrees as they arrive at the required maturity. Those sticks which promise to peel at the next cutting are left. In pruning, with plenty of help, every stick older than two years is cut, whether it will peel or not. A grayish, corky appearance is an indication of the fitness of the shoots for cutting. A certain amount is marked off for each day’s cutting, and it is an offense to go outside of that limit, but within the limit every one is allowed to go where he pleases. When fifteen or twenty persons are allowed to scramble as they please, the trees are agitated as by a whirlwind passing over them and in less than forty minutes the best sticks are cut and appropriated. Then systematic work begins. Every stick is then tested before cutting, and, if the wood is in a fair condition for peeling, it will take about two hours to finish a plat of 484 square feet. There are four such plats to an acre. They yield from twenty-eight to forty-eight pounds each. When called off, no one is allowed to cut another stick. (See illustration.) [Illustration: CUTTING CINNAMON] As long as the seed is on the bushes, which is nearly till the end of the year, the sticks carrying them do not peel, owing possibly to the growth being checked and with it the free flow of sap in the effort to mature the seed. If, therefore, this seed is allowed to remain great loss results, as by the time the seed-bearing bushes are peelable they will have grown so much as to yield coarse bark, fit only to quill coarse cinnamon, or not fit to be quilled at all. To avoid this loss the seed is stripped from the limb, when it will peel in its proper time. A plantation should not be expected to bring large returns for eight or nine years. After the crop, which is taken from four to six inches above ground, has been cut, the stumps should be covered with fresh earth gathered from the space between the rows and formed into a heap around the base. Sometimes a fire is made on the old stump. The next year two or three times as large a crop may be gathered, and so on year after year, until at length the bushes will become so thick as to admit only the weeders and peelers. The only manure required is the weeds, which three or four times a year are placed between the rows and covered with earth. When the shoots are harvested from old stumps, they should be cut with one stroke of the heavy knife, in order to avoid splitting the stems. As the cutting takes place twice each year, there is a succession of young wood of different ages on the tree.