42 COCONUTS, KERNELS, AND CACAO. 



to make fishing lines, and this is the only use to which 

 it is put by the natives. It is obtained from the young 

 pinnae, the older leaves being too strong and coarse to 

 permit the hand-extraction of the fibre. 



The process of extraction is laborious, and, therefore, 

 unremunerative, the cost of the production being as 

 high as 75 a ton. There remains, however, a possi- 

 pility that a mechanical or a chemical process may be 

 introduced to separate the fibre from the pinnae cheaply. 



The tendency in the palm oil and kernel trade is to 

 have large factories and mills on the spot for treating 

 the material, and, therefore, a few words are necessary 

 on this subject. First, the selection of a site for an oil- 

 palm factory necessitates a careful examination of the 

 productivity of oil palms in the vicinity. 



Secondly, factories requiring large supplies of palm 

 fruit near at hand will probably have to resort to 

 plantation methods, in which case the choice of the 

 best variety of palm for planting will be essential. 



Thirdly, a factory requiring 5 tons of palm fruit daily 

 and producing from about | to 1 ton of palm oil, will 

 require about 30,000 trees (say 80 to the acre). This is 

 based upon the calculation that, as the fruit heads con- 

 sist of only 64 per cent, of fruit (the remainder being 

 useless fibrous stem, bracts, etc.), it would be necessary 

 to collect and transport to the factory nearly 8 tons of 

 fruit heads daily, or, taking the number of working days 

 in the year as 200, and thus allowing for the fact that 

 the palms do not bear fully throughout the year, over 

 1,500 tons per annum. 



Smart (Committee on Edible and Oil-producing Nuts 

 and Seeds, Minutes of Evidence, 1916) states that an area 



