New Varieties.—Cacao is exclusively grown from seed, and it is only by careful selection of the most valuable trees that the planter can hope to make the most profitable renewals or additions to his plantations. It is by this means that many excellent sorts are now in cultivation in different regions that have continued to vary from the three original, common forms of Theobroma cacao, until now it is a matter of some difficulty to differentiate them.

Residence.—The conditions for living in the Philippines offer peculiar, it may be said unexampled, advantages to the planter of cacao. The climate as a whole is remarkably salubrious, and sites are to be found nearly everywhere for the estate buildings, sufficiently elevated to obviate the necessity of living near stagnant waters.

Malarial fevers are relatively few, predacious animals unknown, and insects and reptiles prejudicial to human life or health extraordinarily few in number. In contrast to this we need only call attention to the entire Caribbean coast of South America, where the climate and soil conditions are such that the cacao comes to a superlative degree of perfection, and yet the limits of its further extension have probably been reached by the insuperable barrier of a climate so insalubrious that the Caucasian’s life is one endless conflict with disease, and when not engaged in active combat with some form of malarial poisoning his energies are concentrated upon battle with the various insect or animal pests that make life a burden in such regions.

Nonresidence upon a cacao plantation is an equivalent term for ultimate failure. Every operation demands the exercise of the observant eye and the directing hand of a master, but there is no field of horticultural effort that offers more assured reward, or that will more richly repay close study and the application of methods wrought out as the sequence of those studies.