Notes on the Society's Work in 1897-1918. liii. 



figures for vegetable and animal oils quoted include all vegetable and 

 animal oils imported and not solely edible oils. The proportion of the 

 latter may be taken as 60 per cent, of the total of these oils. This re- 

 duces the number of coconuts required to replace imported edible fats and 

 oils to 10,600,000 nuts. We exported last year in round figures 



1,912,000 coconuts equal to ... ...1,912,000 nuts 



168,800 lbs. copra „ ... 325,000 „ 



26,674 gins, coconut 



oil* „ „ ... ...1,067,000 „ 



3,304,000 nuts. 



say in round figures the equivalent of 3,300,000 nuts whilst it may re- 

 quire the oil from 10,600,000 nuts to replace possible shortages in butter, 

 ghee, lard and edible oils. 



Eecent enquiries have proved that the ripe nuts from coconut-palms 

 growing under the climatic conditions prevalent on the front lands of 

 the colony not only contain as high proportions of oil as do nuts the 

 products of any other country, but are capable of yielding copra of 

 exceptionally high oil-content, hot-air dried copra from them having been 

 found to contain from 72 to as high as 79 per cent, of oil. Medium-sized 

 nuts 3 7 ielded the highest proportion of oil in their copra both as sun-dried 

 (76V) and as hot-air dried ("T9%). 



Since Sir Alexander Swettenham left us we have found experimen- 

 tally that the most reliable kinds of seed-nuts for planting-purposes are 

 medium-sized ones yielded by palms which are flourishing — not merely 

 existing — on lands of like nature to that on which the nuts are to be 

 planted and under similar climatic conditions. It is not wise to en- 

 deavour to improve our strain of coconut-palms by planting seed-nuts 

 obtained from palms growing on the far lighter soils of Trinidad or Tobago 

 or of any other country ; those obtained from Wakenaam, from near 

 Aurora and perhaps from elsewhere in Essequibo, and specially selected 

 seed-nuts from the Mahaicony-Abary District will give better and more 

 vigorously growing palms, and what is more important, palms more 

 resistant to adverse climatic influences than such imported ones will be. 

 The sole exception to this that I am aware of are a few, a very few, of 

 the strains imported at the instance of Sir Alexander Swettenham from 

 the Straits Settlement. 



Dr. Cramer, late of Surinam and now in Java, is strongly of opinion 

 that a strain of coconut-palm specially fitted for growth on heavy clay 

 soils and resistant to our local climatic conditions has been naturally evolved 

 in British Guiana in the course of many years' growth under these con- 

 ditions. 



'Under ordinary conditions of extraction in the tropics 100 ripe, full-grown coconuts 

 yield 2.5 gallons of oil. In round figures 10,000 averaged-sized nuts are required to yield 1 

 ton or 250 gallons of coconut oil 



