COCONUT PLANTER'S MANUAL. 27 



suitable t'oi copra-making have been designed. Hamel Smith has 

 designed a simple rotary drier made by David Bridge & Co. at Man- 

 chester. There is another designed by F. A. G. Pape, turned out by 

 the same firm. Both these are described and illustrated in " Consuls 

 of the East." Dr. Copeland in his work on the Coconut makes 

 reference to the tunnel drier designed by a German Engineer ; a 

 steam-heated desiccator planned by the Phillipine Bureau of Agricul- 

 ture ; and the " Magdalena " drier designed by Pedro Bonito. The 

 following is a description (with a diagram) of a tropical drying house 

 in Samoa referred to by Copeland : — The house, the outer walls of 

 which are supported on wooden posts set in cement, stands over a 

 small room of brick and mortar 16^ feet lozig, 1\ wide and 7| high. 

 Set into the wall of this hot room, at the middle of one end, is a fire- 

 place. A flue of stones runs from the fire-place obliquely towards the 

 other end of the room where it is connected by a vertical piece of 

 piping with a horizontal system of sheet iron flues consisting of two 

 length-wise sections and the necessary cross- wise connections. The 

 iron flues, made from sheets, are nearly a foot in diameter. The ends 

 project beyond the walls and can be opened when the pipes need clean- 

 ing. The last flue ends in a chimney of suitable height — say 30 to 

 40 feet. The course of the smoke is shown by arrows in the diagram. 

 The drying room proper is directly over the heating room and a very 

 little larger, and the floor between them is merely a grating. The 

 copra may be placed on coarse coir matting laid over the grating. 

 The temperature is kept as nearly as possible at 112° F. 



DESICCATED COCONUT. 



The desiccated coconut industry was started in the Colony in the 

 early 'eighties. Originally it was in the hands of a few European 

 firms, to whom orders came from Europe and America, but gradually 

 Ceylones.e took to its manufacture, and mills are now to be found 

 .scattered over the Western and North-Western Provinces, and, to some 

 extent, the Southern Province. 



The first necessity in the manufacture of D.C. (as it is called for 

 short) is carefully selected, well-matured nuts. The price of these 

 ranges according to quality, and nuts which yield over 350 lbs. of 

 D.C. per 1 ,000 are much sought after. 1 he best of these yield up to 

 400 lbs. and a little over. Alter being picked the nuts, with the husks 

 on, are allowed to season for about a month in the heap, so as to 

 facilitate husking. They are then husked and taken to the mill, where 

 they undergo a sorting, small and faulty nuts being rejected. The 

 selected nuts are finally put away in a store to be issued and used as 

 necessary. 



