22 



made droppings of a few cattle tethered among the trees, to compensate 

 for the half million or more nuts that a hectare of fairly productive trees 

 should yield during their normal bearing life. 



Upon suitable cocoanut soils i. e., those that are light and perme- 

 able common salt is positively injurious. In support of this contention, 

 I will state that salt in solution will break up and freely combine with 

 lime, making equally soluble chlorids of lime which, of course, freely 

 leach out in such a soil and carry down to unavailable depths these salts, 

 invaluable as necessary bases to render assimilable most plant foods ; and 

 that, on this account, commercial manures containing large amounts of 

 salt, are always to be used with much discretion, owing to the danger of 

 impoverishing the supply of necessary lime in the soil. 



Finally, so injurious is the direct application of salt to the roots of 

 most plants that the invariable custom of trained planters (who, for the 

 sake of the potash contained, are compelled to use crude Stassfurt min- 

 eral manures, which contain large quantities of common salt) is to apply 

 it a very considerable time before the crop is planted, in order that this 

 deleterious agent should be well leached and washed away from the im- 

 mediate field of root activity. 



That the cocoanut is able to take up large quantities of salt may not 

 be disputed. That the character of its root is such as to enable it to do 

 so without the injury that woL 1 1 occur to most cultivated plants I have 

 previously shown, while the history of the cocoanut's inland career, and 

 the records of agricultural chemistry, both conclusively point to the fact 

 that its presence is an incident that in no way contributes to the health, 

 vigor, or fruitfulness of the tree. 



Mr. Cochran's analysis, based upon the unit of 1,000 average nuts, 

 weighing in the aggregate 3,125 pounds, discloses a drain upon soil fer- 

 tility for that number, amounting in round numbers to 



Pounds. 



Nitrogen 8J 



Potash 17 



Phosphoric acid 3 



Eeducing this to crop and area, and taking 60 fruits per annum per 

 tree as a fair mean for the bearing groves in our cocoanut districts and on 

 those rare estates where a systematic spacing of about 173 trees to the 

 hectare has been made, we should have an annual harvest of 10,300 nuts, 

 or, stated in round numbers, 10,000, which will exhaust each year from 

 the soil a total of 



Pounds. 



Nitrogen 82 



Potash 170 



Phosphoric acid 30 



The cocoanut, therefore, while a good feeder, may not be classed with 

 the most depleting of field crops. 



