68 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



some milk absorption, which seems to facilitate 

 the subsequent easy extraction of the endo- 

 sperm." 



As regards the bearing age, and average or 



individual yields in the West Indies, we are 



told that " the tree may begin to produce nuts 



as early as the end of the fourth year ; usually, 



however, they do not do so until the sixth 



or eighth year ; whilst no crop of any great 



importance can generally be expected before 



the ninth to the twelfth year after planting. 



The length of this period depends very largely 



on the treatment which the trees receive 



whilst young, as well as on the fertility of 



the soil and the available supply of moisture. 



Subsequently the crop increases steadily, until 



the twentieth or twenty-fifth year, when it 



reaches a maximum, and continues more or 



less the same until the tree is from fifty to 



seventy years old. After that age the number 



of nuts produced by a coco-nut palm gradually 



diminishes, though crops of some size are 



borne until the tree is eighty or one hundred 



years old. In Ceylon, palms older than this 



even have been known to give useful yields. 



Five or six separate fruit-bearing flower 



branches usually occur on a palm at one time, 



and each may carry as many as ten nuts." 



The question of manuring, pests and disease, 

 &c., in the West Indies will be found in the 

 sections devoted to those subjects, but all the 

 experts are emphatic in their statements regard- 



