(OCOANUT-PL ANTING 63 



a light as possible, but what the practical man 

 wants to know in a plantation in full bearing 

 is in reality the yield per hectare, and this can 

 only be ascertained by taking the average annual 

 crop of nuts and dividing it by the total number 

 of trees, productive and unproductive ; the trees 

 being the usual and most convenient unit on 

 which to base calculations in the case of cocoa- 

 nut plantations. No records such as these being 

 apparently in existence, I can only offer an 

 estimate of the yield, based on such figures as I 

 possess and my observations. I visited one plan- 

 tation which I was assured was the finest in the 

 district. It contained 124,000 cocoanut-trees, 

 and was planted in 1900. It yielded 450,000 

 nuts, but there being only 11,000 bearing trees 

 the yield was given as approximately forty nuts 

 per tree. It appeared to me that quite half of 

 the total number had reached the productive 

 age, though, of course, they were not yet in full 

 bearing. But putting this proportion at one- 

 third instead of one-half, the yield per tree 

 comes out at eleven instead of forty. I noticed 

 in this plantation what, indeed, is a feature in 

 all the cocoanut plantations of the district, that 

 a considerable proportion of trees of ripe age 

 were unproductive; but these must be calcu- 

 lated in when computing the output. Working 



