80 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II 



ago. An estate near to Peradeniya, supposed to be a cacao 

 estate, had been continually planted up with coconuts, areca 

 nuts, pepper, crotons, and other products, till in 1902 the 

 average number of trees per acre was no less than 512. The 

 estate then gave \ cwt. of dry cacao per acre, and a small 

 quantity of the other products, and was losing money at the 

 rate of Rs. 40 per acre per annum. In 1902 a system of 

 cutting out the extra trees was adopted, and now the estate 

 contains only about 300 trees per acre, almost all cacao, the 

 cacao crop is 3| cwts. per acre, and the estate is profitable. 



Another direction in which great care is required is in the 

 selection of nuts for seed ; the very best nuts, i.e. regarded from 

 the point of view of the object of the plantation, whether for 

 copra, for nuts, for desiccated coconut, for oil, or for other 

 purposes, should always be picked for seed, to improve the next 

 generation. On the whole this has been done in Ceylon though 

 not in the Seychelle Islands, and a recent lot of Ceylon nuts 

 sent there was found to exceed the local nuts sometimes in the 

 proportion of three to one. It is also possible that careful 

 hybridisation might improve the varieties of the palm in culti- 

 vation. Different varieties should be tried in the same place, 

 for it is quite possible that a better return might, for example, 

 be obtained by changing the variety cultivated, e.g. by abandon- 

 ing the cultivation of oil nuts, and taking to good fibre nuts. 

 It is also possible that quickly maturing nuts might be selected, 

 which would in time considerably reduce the period of waiting 

 for the palms to flower (now about five or six years). 



A tendency in coconut cultivation just now seems to be the 

 opening of very large plantations under European management. 

 Such plantations can turn out large and uniform supplies of 

 copra, for instance, whereas the copra obtained from the in- 

 numerable small native plantations is of very variable quality. 



Palmyra Palm. Another palm of considerable importance 

 is the Palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer) supposed to be a 

 native of both tropical Africa and tropical Asia, and now very 

 extensively cultivated in tropical India and Ceylon, especially 

 in districts which are a trifle dry for the coconut. It is 



