The practical planting-work must be learned in the field, and I could quote here what has been written on the first page of Chapter VI. Many planting operations, however, are not always well understood; often the practical man knows, how he has to treat his trees or his soil in order to get the best result, but not why. For this reason, different operations, like weeding, shading, manuring, and fermenting, have been explained more fully than is done in most agricultural handbooks. Other subjects have been treated in detail which cannot be learned in the field, especially the varieties of cocoa, the botanical characters, and the diseases and their treatment.
