Samoa in 1913 439 



In such favoured places coco-nuts may be 

 planted rather closely, especially along the 

 beaches, where the natives often grow them 

 spaced less than 20 ft. apart; but it is good 

 practice not to locate the plants less than 25 ft. 

 distance, and many people favour 30 ft. x 

 30 ft. (forty-eight to the acre). On hill-sides 

 where the trees rise tier on tier the rising rows 

 may be closer, as the branches are not liable 

 to interlock, and thus 30 ft. x 20 ft. may 

 answer admirably ; on the other hand, hillside 

 nuts never bear full crops. 



As a rule, about 5,000 nuts are required to 

 make up one ton of copra, or about two nuts 

 to i Ib. of copra. On the Coral Islands, both 

 north and south of Samoa, the trees never 

 attain the same girth as they do in the volcanic 

 islands. 1 They take much longer to come into 

 bearing, and in the end produce a very much 

 smaller nut. Expensive experiments have 

 been made, and young coco-nuts have been 

 treated with all sorts of manures in these out- 

 of-the-way 'sandy islets, where it has been 

 found that sulphate of iron, in small quantums, 

 applied at long intervals, gives the best results. 

 Apparently the natives themselves, in a blunder- 

 ing way, found out that iron in some form was 

 needed, and for a long time they have deposited 

 about the roots of their trees old tin cans, bits 

 of chain, wire rigging, &c., &c., and have 



Subsoiling with explosives should benefit such land. 



