The plant itself is an evergreen shrub with soft gray bark, and dark green laurel-like leaves. The white-petaled star-shaped flowers, with their yellow centers, are beautiful, and the bright red berries, growing in clusters close to the stem are not unlike in appearance the marmaduke cherries of the United States. The fragrance that fills the air from a grove of coffee trees can never be forgotten. The shrub is seldom permitted to grow more than ten feet in height and begins to bear within three or four years from planting. The berries ripen in about six months from the time of flowering. Each contains two seeds or coffee beans, the surrounding pulp shriveling up as the time approaches for picking. During the gathering of the crop women and children work usually in the shade of taller trees, such as the mango or aguacate, stripping the fruit from the branches into baskets or upon pieces of canvas laid on the ground, which may be gathered up at the corners and carried to the drying floors where the berries are spread out as evenly and thinly as possible and given all the air and sunlight available. Early in the morning these are raked over to insure rapid drying. When sufficiently dry the berries are run through hulling machines which remove the outer pulp, leaving the finished green bean of commerce. Approximately 500 trees are planted to the acre in starting a coffee plantation, and these will yield under favorable conditions at the expiration of the fourth year about one half of a pound to a tree, or 250 pounds to the acre, the value of which would be $50. The sixth year these trees should produce one pound each, making the return from one acre $100. Two years later these same trees will yield $200 per acre, and the tenth year $300. Each succeeding year, if well cared for, the yield should increase until the trees reach maturity at twenty-five years. On the western slopes of the great Cordilleras that sweep throughout the length of Mexico, several varieties of excellent coffee are found. Among these is one, that through some freak of nature, afterwards encouraged and developed by the natives of that district, has been induced to produce two crops a year. It is stated on reliable authority also that trees ten years old, in this restricted area of western Mexico, will yield five pounds of berries to the tree, or in the two periods of annual bearing a total of ten pounds to each plant. The Department of Agriculture is endeavoring to secure both seed and nursery stock from this district, which will be transplanted to the Experimental Station at Santiago de las Vegas, and definite data secured in regard to the success of this variety of coffee in Cuba.