1 86 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



mends that Robusta coffee be planted 7 x 7 ft. 

 as a catch-crop, at the same time as the coco- 

 nuts. When there is a good local demand for 

 fruit, these can be planted instead of, or as 

 well as, the coffee, but of this more anon. 



Where possible, the nurseries should be estab- 

 lished in partial shade in order to break the 

 action of the direct rays of the hot midday sun. 

 The natives in Malaya, the Philippines, and 

 some other parts simply form a nursery by 

 collecting a lot of nuts side by side under a 

 heavy shade-tree like the mango or the jak- 

 fruit, and leaving them there until ^plants, of 

 roughly 2 ft. in height, have grown out of them. 

 It should be so calculated that they arrive at 

 this stage of development at the beginning of 

 the big rains, when planting out into holes dug 

 at the proper spaces is proceeded with. This 

 is not such a bad method after all, especially if 

 a careful selection of nuts has been made. It 

 is possible in this case to select the most vigo- 

 rous plants from the mass and deal with these 

 only, leaving the weaker- looking ones until 

 the next rains, or, better still, when possible, by 

 rejecting them altogether. Close supervision, 

 again, is in this case a sine qua non, for a small 

 space will contain a great number of nuts. One 

 single " topee " or grove of half-a-dozen full- 

 grown mango trees will in this case be ample 

 to shelter many thousands of seed-nuts, even 

 if the last 10 ft. or so at the outer edge of 

 the foliage crown have been left out of the 



