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week or so before eating. 1 have seen in Queensland one kind which 
attains the size of a child’s head, and is full of a sweet pulp. The 
average yield there is 40 to 45 bushels, worth £35 per acre. 
Two other Custard Apples—the Sour Sop (syn. Corossol), 4. 
muricada, and the Swrer Sop, A squamosa—are trees of the same 
family, which are grown in the tropics and valued for their fruit. 
THE Coconut. 
Personal inspection of coconut plantations at the Aru Islands, 
and in the Malay States and Java, leads me to believe that the sea- 
coast from Port Darwin to Beagle Bay, Kimberley, is in many places 
very suitable for the cultivation of this tree. 
Several varieties are grown of which the large Java nuts are 
particularly prized in Java and also in Ceylon, but it remains to be 
seen whether under less favourable conditions other varieties bearing 
smaller nuts would not be more profitable. 
The nuts should be selected from picked trees, and are placed 
in trenches with the stem part up. Ashes and salt are placed in 
these trenches, which are filled with soil and kept moist. When the 
nuts have sprouted they are planted in holes dug 25ft. to 30ft. 
apart, and also manured with compost and ashes, and, if the ground 
is not naturally salty, some salt is added. I have seen splendid 
groves in sand right against the sea. The trees commence bearing in 
five to six years, and carry from six to twelve nuts or more on each 
flowering spike, which come out right through the year, the trees 
yielding fifty to one hundred nuts during the year, and continwng 
to bear for half a century or more. In Malaya I have seen splendid 
groves established on poor, gritty, sandy loam with a coarse sand 
subsoil. Trees in good bearing average 10 to 12 nuts at each picking 
every two months, or 60 to 72 a year. In Ceylon a plantation aver- 
aging 50 nuts per tree a year would be worth £100 per acre, and in 
the Malay States a plantation yielding the same average, which I 
visited, was estimated to be worth £60 to £70 per acre. In Java I also 
had an opportunity of visiting a small plantation from which the nuts 
were sold on the trees at 45 5 guilders per 100 (8s. 4d.); the trees, 
which averaged 50 nuts, brought in a clear income of 4s. 2d. each. 
On each tree was hanging a small gunny bag containing a mixture 
of salt and ashes, which are washed down the stem by the rain and 
fertilise the tree. These also receive occasionally some manure placed 
around the stem in a ring from which the soil had heen dug out. 
If intended to be tapped for juice or “milk,” the fruits are 
not allowed to mature. Ripe nuts give a coarser fibre (coir) than 
when unripe, but if “copra” or the thickened milk is required the 
fruit must be ripe. The coir is torn off by means of a shod stick 
placed upright in the ground; the shell is then broken and the copra 
