CULTIVATION OF THE COCOA-NUT TREE. 133 



orifices in a direction opposite to the shoot, and penetrate the 

 ground. The nuts put down in April are sufficiently grown to 

 be planted out before the rains of September, when they are 

 set out in holes, three feet deep, and twenty to thirty feet 

 apart. During the first years of their growth the young plants 

 require incessant care. They must be assiduously watered, 

 and protected from the glare of the sun under shades made 

 of the plaited fronds of the cocoa-nut palm, or the fan-like 

 leaves of the palmyra; and as their tender shoots are especial 

 favourites with wild hogs, rats, elephants, and porcupines, 

 constant attention is required to ward off the attacks of these 

 animals. As the stem ascends it has to encounter the most 

 formidable enemy of all — the Cooroominya beetle (Batocera 

 Tubus), which penetrates the trunk near the ground, and de- 

 posits its eggs in the cavity, the grubs when hatched eating 

 their way upwards through the centre of the tree to the top, 

 where they pierce the young leaf- buds, and do such damage, 

 as frequently to leave not a single young tree untouched in 

 large plantations. 



Notwithstanding the repulsive aspect of the large pulpy grubs 

 of these pernicious insects, they are esteemed as great a delicacy 

 by the natives as the termites, which often prove equally de- 

 structive. All the injuries from these united causes involve 

 the loss of about one-fourth of the plants put do^^n, and 

 constant renewal is required in order to replace those which 

 have been destroyed. After the second year irrigation becomes 

 unnecessary, and all that is then required is to keep the 

 ground clean, and in each alternate year to dress the young 

 palms with sea-weed and salt manure. In six or seven years 

 the trees usually commence to bear fruit, and yield an abun- 

 dance for sixty years, when the influence of age begins to 

 show itself in decreasing production. The cultivation of the 

 cocoa-palm, which was formerly confined to the native Singa- 

 lese, has latterly been undertaken with growing spirit by 

 European planters, who in the year 1853 had already covered 

 21,412 acres with this valuable tree; and, as Professor Schmarda 

 (" Voyage round the World ") informs us that there is yet room 

 in Ceylon for a tenfold increase of its palm-groves, a vast field 

 still lies open here to British capital and enterprise. 



Wherever the cocoa grows, its sweet and nutritious nuts are 



