21 



condition to the continued profitable conduct of the industry. Nothing 

 is to be gained by the removal of the earliest flowering spikes. Flowering 

 is the congestion of sap at a special point which, if the grower could con- 

 trol it, he would wish to direct, in the case of young plants, to the build- 

 ing up of leaf and wood. Cutting the inflorescence of the cocoanut re- 

 sults in profuse bleeding and, unless this be checked by the use of a pow- 

 erful styptic or otherwise, it is doubtful if the desired end would be ac- 

 complished. The earlier crops of nuts should all be taken with extension 

 cutters or from ladders. No shoulders for climbing should be cut in any 

 tree, the stem of which has not become dense, hard, and woody. Cut 

 when the wood is the least bit succulent, they becoming inviting points 

 of attack for borers. 



With these reservations, there is everything to commend the practice 

 of shouldering the tree, as offering the safest, most expeditious and eco- 

 nomical way of making it possible to climb and secure the harvest. It 

 is, of course, understood that the cuts should be made sloping outward, 

 so as not to collect moisture and invite decay, and no larger than is 

 strictly necessary for the purpose. 



MANURING. 1 



The manuring problem must be met and solved bj the best resources 

 at our command. The writer has had pointed out hundred of trees that, 

 wholly guiltless of any direct application of manure, have borne excellent 

 crops for many successive years ; but he has also seen hundreds of others 

 in their very prime, at thirty years, which once produced a hundred select 

 nuts per year, now producing fluctuating and uncertain crops of fifteen 

 to thirty inferior fruits. 



Time and again native growers have told me of the large and uniformly 

 continuous crops of nuts from the trees immediately overshadowing their 

 dwellings and, although some have attributed this to a sentimental ap- 

 preciation and gratitude on the part of the palm at being made one of 

 the family of the owner, a few were sensible enough to realize that it 

 came of the opportunity that those particular trees had to get the ma- 

 nurial benefit of the household sewage and waste. 



Yet, the lesson is still unlearned and, after much diligent inquiry, I 

 have yet to find a nut grower in the Philippines who at any time (except 

 at planting) makes direct and systematic application of manure to his 

 trees. 



In India, Ceylon, the Penang Peninsula, and Cochin China, where the 

 tree has been cultivated for generations, the most that was ever attempted 

 until very recently was to throw a little manure in the hole where the tree 

 was planted, and for all future time to depend on the inferior, grass- 

 throughout this paper the writer uses this word in preference to ' 'fertilizing" 

 even when speaking of so-called "commercial fertilizers." . 



