240 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



visitors to the Island from all parts of the world, 

 what the profit an acre from coconuts was. My 

 invariable reply was "That depends on what you 

 pay for your estate, what the crops are and 

 where the estate is situated with reference to 

 cost of transport." 



Sir W H Lever suggests that what Railway 

 Companies do in Canada to develop the country, 

 by supplying settlers with homesteads, the 

 value of which is paid back after a few years, 

 should be done in the Tropics. The Govern- 

 ment should give grants of land, a little capital 

 and a homestead for pioneers. What has our 

 Government done? Mr Wicherley applied for 

 thousands of acres of waste land in the arid 

 Wanni. Ooe would have thought that Govern- 

 ment would have welcomed such an applica- 

 tion and given the would-be pioneers all the 

 encouragement in its power. What was actually 

 done ? A prohibitive price was asked for the 

 land which effectually choked off the Company 

 that was to be formed to pioneer where no oue 

 else would go and settle down, or at least acquire 

 large acreages. 



I will pass over the preface and introduction. 



The first chapter is on "The Cost of a Coconut 

 Estate," It has no local application and is 

 therefore of not much interest locally, except for 

 the purposes of comparison with the very elabo- 

 rate estimate in the local publication " The 

 Coconut Planters' Manual." 



According to Mr L C Brown, Inspector of 

 Coconut Plantations for the F. M.S., to open up 

 500 acres the expenditure in the 1st year will be 

 $32,400. In the 2nd and 3rd year $12,100. The 

 total expenditure till the end of the 9th year is 

 said to be $137,060 or about $274 per acre. Crop at 

 10 nuts per tree is estimated from the 6th year. 

 The income from the 6th— 9th year is estimated 

 at $117,440. Deducting income from expendi- 

 ture, the cost of the estate at the end of the 9th 

 year will be $19,620 or a little over $30 the acre, 



I need not weary your readers with the de- 

 tails of the cost of opening an estate of 500 

 hectares in a German Colony. 



A few pages are devoted to a statement of 

 comparative values of coconut and soya bean 

 products at the beginning of April, 1912. Your 

 readers will not thank me if I give them these 

 details. Soya bean as a dangerous competitor 

 of coconut was a bogey that alarmed not a few 

 a couple of years ago. It is laid at the present 

 time. 



Who was it that stated authoritatively last 

 year that capital is being driven from Ceylon 

 to the Straits owing to the encouragement 



offered Planters there? Was it Mr. Arthur 

 Lampard ? Read what Mr. Hamel Smith has 

 to 6ay : — " For some reason or other Ceylon 

 especially has been a favoured child of fortune, 

 and capital and enterprise have preferably gone 

 there to the detriment at times of other re- 

 gions, which are, in themselves, equally, if 

 not better, favoured by Nature. The reason 

 may lie in the charm of the land, but the 

 thoroughness and enterprise of its European 

 Planters, certainly, has a great deal to do with 

 this, as was the case when the same man started 

 to plant up Malaya with Rubber. " Most right- 

 thinking people will heartily endorse this 

 estimate of the European Planter. 



1 feel very highly flattered that my paper on 

 coconut cultivation contributed to the Agri- 

 cultural Society appears in its entirety in Mr 

 Hamel Smith's book with a few introductory 

 words and foot-notes: " We quite agree with all 

 Mr Beven says, but there are many who main- 

 tain that to cultivate, the roots must or may be, 

 disturbed or damaged, aud through them the 

 tree." Itisnot possible to cultivate the soil 

 without disturbing or damaging the roots of 

 whatever trees grows on it, " and through them 

 the tree." This is true of almost all "trees " but 

 the coconut. If anybody takes the trouble to 

 carefully observe the root-growth of the coconut 

 tree, he will notice that the bole of the tree is 

 constantly throwing out new roots. The 

 damaged roots of a coconut tree always die back, 

 but new ones replace them at once. Where the 

 soil of a coconut estate has not been disturbed 

 by ploughing or tilling, it will very often be 

 found that the first ploughing or tilling will 

 give the trees a shock and will throw them back. 

 But this is temporary. To give the trees as little 

 of a shock as possible when applying manure, I 

 always advocate leaving a space of two feet 

 immediately round the tree, intact. The new 

 roots within that area at once take the place of 

 the damaged ones and minimise the shock in- 

 duced by cutting the roots. 



On page 48 is a specimen of a young tree in 

 Klanang estate carrying 360 nuts. It is splen- 

 did as a specimen. I have seen trees under 10 

 years old in the Puttalam District carrying as 

 good if not better crops. What I do not like 

 in the illustrated tree is that it is tapering too 

 quickly. That is not a type of a tree that will 

 grow up to be heavy bearing. 



The experience in Ceylon is not that copra in 

 the sun takes five days to dry and in the grill 10 

 to 12 hours. In a critique 1 published recently 

 in your columns, I said that though many 



