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In my opinion, fifty good selected trees per acre is the optimum, 
as we call it. If you put on forty trees per acre, you may get 
a larger tree, and a few more nuts off each; but you must then 
remember that you will be ten trees short per acre; and if you 
get 100 or 150 nuts per tree that is a pretty good production. 
If you put 75 palms per acre, it is certainly too much. So 
although some are planting the trees only 30 or 33 feet apart, 
I think that, considering everything, 50 feet is the proper 
distance in ordinary more or less sloping, but not quite level 
soil. Coconuts should not be planted on quite level soil. 
It is impossible to say what the steady yield per acre will 
be until you know the soil thoroughly, and how the trees 
are behaving. Probably 100 nuts per tree, or about 5,000 per 
year per acre, is not going very far out of the way for a 
plantation which is neither best nor worst, but is moderately 
clean. We get 250 to 300 nuts per tree in parts where the soil 
is exceptionally rich and well-watered. But the general 
average in one part is below 30, probably not more than 20 
nuts per tree. But even that is not an estimate for all places, 
because I have shown you photographs of over-planted areas, 
where half the trees will be without any nuts at all, and have 
been in that condition, perhaps, for years. Even on the Penal 
Constitution Farm there are trees nine and ten years old 
which have not shown any sign of fruiting yet. This is often 
due to bad drainage, to scum and mess on the surface of the 
soil. But generally speaking, on a moderately well cultivated 
plantation, 100 nuts is not too much. It takes 250 to 325 nuts 
to make a picul, and there are 16 piculs to the ton. Some 
claim, with very large nuts, 200 to a picul. But during one 
year, when the soil had to do without rain, the nuts were so 
small that some of the factories said it took 500 of the nuts 
to make a picul. It is impossible to give the cost per acre until 
we know how much forest there is to be cleared, and how 
much grass there 1s on it to uproot, and how much you have 
got to pay for your labour. But those figures are worked 
out in the pamphlet I have mentioned (Bulletin No. 25: The 
Philippine Coconut Industry, Bureau of Printing, Manila, 
Philippine Islands.). 
In reply to a question by Mr. Allan on the subject of 
the steam-drying of copra, Mr. Barrett said: There is no large 
plant there for drying. Nearly four years ago I devised a 
steam oven with steam pipes, and we made a model of it, an¢ 
sent it to the Second Philippine Exposition, and it has been 
copied in a few cases; though not so many as one could have 
wished, and they were very cheap copies. We made ours of 
sheet-iron and asbestos; we had steam-pipes running under 
trays, and they were working very well. They turn out fairly 
