114 



THE COCO-NUT 



CHAP, 



choice of variety should be made. From various parts 

 of the tropics whole coco -nuts are shipped to the 

 temperate zones, and in different places these are 

 bought on different terms. Where the local custom is 

 to pay a given price per coco-nut, irrespective of the 

 size, the planter who produces large nuts is at an 

 obvious disadvantage, for small-fruit varieties almost 

 always produce most nuts. If the nuts were bought by 

 weight, each variety might be expected to sell according 

 to its actual value ; but as a business procedure this is 

 hardly possible, because of the variable amount of water 

 contained inside the nuts. In Trinidad the nuts are 

 sold by number, but only nuts above a certain minimum 

 size will be accepted. For such a market, it is evident 

 that the most desirable variety, from the point of view 

 of the planter, is one which produces a crop which is 

 uniformly just above the minimum marketable size. 



If coir is the product which is expected to be of 

 greatest value, the qualities which make a nut good or 

 bad are the amount, quality, and ease of preparation of 

 the fibre. Some but not all of the varieties grown in 

 the Maldive and Laccadive Islands produce a particu- 

 larly good fibre. As a rule, the market prices are such 

 that coco-nuts are worth more for copra or oil than for 

 coir, and it is therefore not advisable, except under 

 peculiar local conditions, to sacrifice anything in the 

 copra producing power for the sake of superior fibre in 

 the husk. 



In the Philippines, in the province of La Laguna 

 and in the coco-nut district immediately around it, and 

 locally elsewhere, there is found a peculiar variety 

 known as " Makapund," which, instead of having a 

 cavity inside the hard endosperm, has a moderately 

 light but still firm tissue filling the entire interior of 

 the nut. Makapund nuts themselves will not germinate, 

 but are likely to be produced on trees which grow from 

 ordinary nuts borne on trees part of whose nuts were 

 Makapund. The Makapund nut is valued as a delicacy, 

 and the individual nuts sell frequently at a price of 



