126 



THE COCO-NUT 



CHAP. 



plants as much land as he can expect to care for and 

 invests no part of his resources in pulling or grubbing 

 out stumps. It would cost more to remove the stumps 

 than it usually does in temperate countries ; and on the 

 other hand, with the tropical heat and moisture, white 

 ants or other insects, and the fungi will get rid of 

 the stumps far sooner than decay would remove them 

 in the North. The rubber planters' objection to the 

 presence of stumps is chiefly that they serve as breed- 

 ing-places for white ants, which then attack the living 

 rubber. It will rarely happen that the termites do any 

 damage to coco-nuts planted in the field ; and where 

 they are troublesome they can be guarded against by 

 poison or by cultivation far more cheaply and effectively 

 than can be done by grubbing out the stumps. 



Assuming that the land is cleared, by labour and by 

 fire, as completely as is feasible, it should then be 

 brought into immediate use, both by coco-nuts and by 

 catch-crops for the coco-nuts. The first thing to be 

 done is to line off the ground, marking accurately the 

 spot for each tree. The regular arrangement of trees in 

 the field is a matter of very considerable permanent 

 importance. Cultivation is obviously made much easier 

 by it, and this applies not only to the coco-nuts but 

 to any other crop which may be interplanted. More 

 important than this, however, is ease in supervision. 

 Whether or not the management and care of the farm 

 be handled by contract, it is very desirable that it be 

 easy to check at all times the work which is done on 

 the field. This will of course be very much easier if 

 the trees are regularly arranged so that the grove can 

 easily be divided up into units. Before the ground can 

 be lined off, a decision must be made as to the distance 

 between trees, a point on which practice in different 

 places varies very widely. 



Those who have written about the coco-nut have, 

 without exception, recommended wider spacing than is 

 often to be found in practice. One factor which has 



