After the land is ready for planting the coffee, and as early as possible in the monsoon, the young shade trees should be planted in lines or avenues running from east to west, and the trees should be planted so close that they may in five or six years touch each other, and thus form what looks like a series of hedges in parallel lines.  The object of this formation is that as the declination of the sun is southerly during our non-cloudy or clear sky season, a close shadow may be cast from the south to the north, so that the spaces between the lines may have a lateral shade cast on them.  When the trees begin to crowd each other every other one should of course be taken, out, and this may be repeated a second time if necessary.  But, besides the southerly, we have also to consider the hot westerly sun, which will strike down the avenues from, say, between two and four in the afternoon.  This it is important to block out with occasional trees planted in the avenue, but it is only, of course, where the land is exposed to the afternoon sun that the avenues should be blocked with occasional trees.  After fully considering the subject, I find it impossible to say even approximately at what distance the lines of trees should be planted, on account of the great variety in the gradients, and the planter must here use his own judgment; and I can only say generally that the lines of trees require to be much nearer each other on a southerly than on a northerly aspect; nearly as close on a westerly aspect as on a southerly; and on an easterly aspect, at a closer distance than on a northerly one.  Some guide toward the nearness of these lines will afterwards be found in the remarks on the quantity of shade required for the various aspects.

After having planted the young shade trees, then, there comes the question of providing shade for them, for without it their growth will be very slow, and the planter would have to wait a great many years before obtaining such an amount of shade as would have an effect in lowering the temperature of the plantation.  He requires then some quick-growing tree as a nurse for the good caste shade trees, and the only tree I know of that is suitable for this purpose is the quick-growing charcoal tree (Sponia Wightii)—­Kanarese, gorkul mara—­which springs up with the first rain after the forest has been cleared and burnt.  Planters, I am aware, have, generally speaking, a great objection to this tree, and it is considered by Mr. Graham Anderson (vide his book previously quoted) as being “generally regarded as prejudicial and useless.”  This conclusion has probably arisen from the fact that it is certainly a bad thing to have a rapid grower, and therefore a greedy feeder on the land, and hence it has been found that the charcoal tree is bad when young.  But when it has attained its full height, which in ordinary circumstances is about thirty feet (I have one specimen on my property about sixty feet