4i 8 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



the cost of gathering the nuts and in turning 

 them into merchantable copra delivered at the 

 seashore or shipping port. 



However, I do not think that even the 

 most expensively worked property will have 

 a charge of more than 70 shillings per ton 

 of 2,240 Ibs. for this item. As cattle are always 

 in demand, and as, by wide spacing the trees, 

 say planting 27 x 27, or 30 x 30, good grass 

 in many varieties will flourish, the profit from 

 the sale of the surplus cattle will go a long way 

 towards offsetting the cost of making up the 

 copra. Hardly any weeding under matured 

 coco-nuts is done in Samoa, where cattle are 

 raised on the properties ; whilst, as regards 

 the yield of copra per acre, fine estates give 

 locwt. per annum, others from 7 cwt. upwards, 

 per acre. 



Regarding the actual yields obtained from 

 coco-nut palms, 1 we see that during 1912 

 the Kirivaula Coco-nut Plantation obtained 

 241,206 nuts from 7,591 trees, or an average 

 of 32 nuts per tree, as compared with 44 nuts 

 in 1911. This falling off, instead of an increase, 

 was entirely due to the extreme drought that 

 had been experienced, and had it not been for 

 the manuring operations of the two previous 

 years, Kirivaula would have done even worse. 

 It is interesting further to note that out of the 

 241,206 nuts obtained, 31,666 made 22 candies 

 (candy = 560 lb., or 5 cwt.) and 150 Ib. copra, 



1 Published in Tropical Life, May, 1913. 



