440 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



even occasionally driven spikes into the trees, 

 asserting that such treatment was beneficial. 

 Unless a fair amount of rain falls with good 

 distribution throughout the year, coco-nuts will 

 not grow and bear on sandy exposed islands 

 of the sea, and many such places have lately 

 been abandoned in the Pacific as unworthy of 

 further outlays. This experience has been ex- 

 pensively bought and ought not to be lost. 



In prospectuses, and even in such places as 

 Samoa, the statement is frequently made that 

 coco-nut trees bear annually about 100 nuts 

 each. Manifestly this is incorrect, although at 

 any time the investigator may see from fifty to 

 300 nuts ripening on the trees, for it is a fact 

 that they hang much longer than is generally 

 believed. In face of this it might pay to re- 

 move a large proportion of the nuts, and so give 

 the tree a chance, and give the forty or fifty 

 nuts which is the most the planter can expect 

 every encouragement to become as "meaty " 

 as possible, especially as many trees bear very 

 little or even not at all. Some years ago 

 the natives of Samoa were permitted to climb 

 their trees and throw down the nuts for copra- 

 making, and the result was that many immature 

 nuts were made up into a half-dried copra and 

 sold to keenly competing traders, by whom 

 this mess was exported, but being of such low 

 quality it brought poor prices and aroused the 

 suspicion of every buyer in Sydney, where the 

 bulk of the crop was marketed. 



