442 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



very expensive but a very necessary work in 

 bringing forward a plantation, and while the 

 nuts are young they have to be attended to in 

 this way to bring them along, and enable them 

 to care for themselves. No plant more quickly 

 responds to good treatment than these palms 

 do. At first, while the shoot is small, a circle 

 extending 2 ft. around the nut is weeded, but 

 within a year this has extended so that no grass 

 is within 4 ft. of the nut ; and as the tree 

 advances the circle enlarges, until in the fourth 



o 



year the tree is well out of the ground, and 

 cattle may be introduced to weed and also to 

 manure the plantation. In Samoa it is not safe 

 to introduce them earlier, and often not even 

 then, for on every property, however well regu- 

 lated, there will be occasionally misses, that is, 

 places where the young trees have died, and it 

 is necessary in such cases to get new plants in 

 and beyond danger before animals can be put 

 on the land. Of late years a grass which was 

 introduced by Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, and grown 

 at Vailima, has pretty well overrun the whole 

 country, and is to be found in the most dis- 

 tant places ; this often takes charge of clear- 

 ings. It is desperately fought against on cacao 

 estates, but is frequently allowed to flourish on 

 coco-nut properties. In shaded places it pro- 

 vides a fairly useful grazing ground, but cattle 

 do not readily fatten on it, and where the sun 

 gets at this grass it is coarse and many animals 

 refuse it. Buffalo grass is no longer planted, 



