No. 57. — 1906.J coconut cultivation. 



39 



THE COCONUT PALM IN CEYLON : 

 BEGINNING, RISE, AND PROGRESS OF ITS CULTIVATION. 



No. 1. — From earliest Times to 1660 A.D. or the close of the 

 Portuguese Occupation of the Maritime Provinces. 



By the Hon. Mr. John Ferguson, C.M.G-. 



The Coconut Palm has been the subject of several Papers 

 included in the Journals of this Society. In the very first 

 number, published in 1845, there is a Paper " On the Ravages 

 of the Kuruminiya or Coconut Beetle," by J. Capper. The 

 same beetle is referred to by Edgar Layard in the fourth 

 issue of the Journal a few years after, in the course of a 

 sketch on the Natural History of Ceylon. Again in Journal 

 No. 5 the brothers J. G. and W. S. Taylor of Batticaloa con- 

 tributed an interesting Paper " On the Manufacture of 

 Sugar from the Juice or Sap of the Coconut Tree." In 1853 

 Mr. A. 0. Brodie of the Civil Service contributed a statistical 

 account of the Districts of Chilaw and Puttalam, in which 

 reference is made to topes of coconuts along the sea coast, 

 the total of the palms in the two districts altogether being 

 then estimated at 950,000, covering about 12,000 acres. 

 Then in 1882 we had brief references to the coconut palm 

 from Ibn Batuta's account of his visit (in 1343) to the 

 Maldives in the Paper translated for us by Mr. Albert Gray. 

 And, finally, there is a reference to this palm in Johann 

 Jacob Saar's Account of Ceylon in 1647-1657, translated for 

 the Society by Mr. Freudenberg, Vice-President, in 1885. 

 The traveller there speaks of " the many and beautiful trees 

 called coconut trees " in the Island, and details some of the 

 ways in which they are utilized ; while he also mentions 



