140 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



more Europeans will devote their time and 

 their money to the establishment of large coco- 

 nut plantations, at any rate in Samoa, if the 

 law regarding native plantings is enforced. 

 The Europeans, it is considered, are more likely 

 to devote their efforts to rubber and cacao, 

 especially as these latter hold out promises of 

 quicker returns, but at the same time it cannot 

 be denied that a coco-nut plantation represents 

 a substantial, solid and stable property, yielding 

 regular returns, so that anybody who has 

 persevered and brought his estate up to a 

 producing stage can look forward to reaping 

 handsome and steady profits ; for there are 

 very few economic plants in existence which 

 will yield such steady returns for from fifty to 

 eighty years, and just now the high price for 

 copra, which promises to be permanent, has 

 brought prosperity to all the coco -nut growing 

 sections, and the area planted in coco-nuts is 

 being largely increased. At the same time we 

 would claim that you can do the same with 

 cacao and rubber, if properly looked after, and 

 for this reason if we went to Samoa to plant 

 and the Island from all accounts is an ideal 

 centre for tropical agriculture we would go 

 in for all three products (planted in belts, not 

 inter-planted), cacao, rubber and coco-nuts. 



Regarding the output of copra in the 

 South Seas, the London Chamber of Commerce 

 Journal, some time back, reported that the prin- 

 cipal copra-producing country, after India (and 



