and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— May, 1912. 461 



he put seed nuts in supply-holes and covered 

 them over with coconut branches and allowed 

 them to grow there. I have never noticed 

 " shock " killing coconut plants when they are 

 put out after their roots have penetrated the 

 husks. Drought or too much rain kills coco- 

 nut plants, whatever the age at which they" are 

 planted out. I prefer a coconut shell-ful (about 

 1 lb.) of kainit, to salt sprinkled round lately 

 put out plants, both as a protection against 

 white ants and to keep the soil moist round 

 them in dry weather. 



I prefer burying weeds and dead branches to 

 burning them. The decaying vegetable matter 

 adds humus to the soil. The butt end of the 

 coconut branches can be burned, as their decay 

 is slow. It is not the " smoke which materially 

 helps to keep down beetles and other pests,'' 

 but the fires. If these are made at night-fall, 

 insects are attracted into them and get burnt. 



Mr Manchip is wrong when he states that 

 picking by climbing in with bamboos is peculiar 

 to Ceylon. It is peculiar to only some parts of 

 Ceylon. In the North and East of the Island 

 the nuts are collected from the ground. The 

 advantages of cleaning up the trees and taking 

 in crop at stated intervals, are too obvious to be 

 stated. One advantage is, the trees are relieved 

 of the strain of carrying crop till it dries and falls, 



One hears a great deal of the bearing capaci- 

 ties of the coconut palms in the Straits. Fifty 

 nuts per tree per annum in the eighth year, 

 from average trees, may be secured in the 

 Straits, but certainly not in Ceylon, except 

 over a limited area. So with 100 nuts per tree 

 pef annum. 



Mr Manchip is surely over particular when 

 he states that " on a 500 acre estate in Ceylon I 

 picked 4,599 Duts per acre," Anyone else would 

 have said 4,600. But like a celebrated chara- 

 cter, he many exclaim " why should I speak a 



He for a d d coconut. " He says further 



" These ran 4,800 to a ton of copra," i. e., 960 

 nuta to a candy of copra. I happen to know 

 the coconut estates Mr Manchip was on when 

 in Ceylon. I fail to locate this splendid estate 

 of 500 acres — Truly yours, 



B. 



DRYING HOUSE FOR COPRA. 



Mr, Hamel Smith's Idea. 

 The Editor of Tropical Life writes very in- 

 terestingly in support of a proposed house for 

 drying " by the acre " which is worthy of con- 

 sideration at the hands more especially — of 

 coconut planters in these, days when drying and 



more especially rapid drying is the order of the 

 day. Mr. Hamel Smith's idea, which he has 

 reduced to practical shape, is a chamber heated 

 above the temperature of the air outside, with a 

 floor area extending almost into acres, over 

 which the produce can be laid out and dried 

 quickly and cheaply shut off from the dirt and 

 wet of outside. Mr. Smith illuminates his 

 letter press with a diagram of the kind of 

 building he suggests for the above purpose. It 

 shows a building of four floors about 100' by 30' 

 with an eight-foot shaft at each end. The skel- 

 eton floors are fitted with strong woven wire 

 stretched lightly across, and securely fastened 

 on all sides to the joists placed two or three feet 

 apart underneath. Over the wirework, which 

 must be ot a small mesh both for strength and 

 to keep tho produce as much as possible from 

 falling through, it would probably be found best, 

 in Mr. Hamel Smith's opinion, to lay* loosely 

 woven sacking or native-made matting, to pre- 

 vent rust from falling through, and also, when 

 dry, to facilitate and hasten the collection and 

 removal ot the^dried article which can be taken 

 to the side and lowered down the canvas or 

 boarded shoots provided, while fresh supplies 

 come up the lifts on the other side of the 

 building, and which are shown in the dia- 

 gram. We hope that for the benefit of our 

 readers Mr. Hamel Smith will send us photo 

 blocks, showing the building. Loose planks, at 

 least an inch in thickness, will be laid about as 

 desired to enable the men to move about among 

 the produce as they wish, and require to do, to 

 attend to it whilst being dried. By having the 

 boards loose they can be placed as is most con- 

 venient. "Based on actual 'results','' writes Mr 

 Hamel Smith, " such a building is estimated to 



DRY 48,000 lb OF COPRA PER DAY FOR TEN 

 HOURS." 



Having thus described the flooring we will, in 

 Mr Smith's words, explain the working of the 

 building as a drying machine on a large scale. 

 The heaters, which will burn husks or other re- 

 fuse as fuel, heats part or all of the air blown 

 through their air-ways by four propeller fans, 

 two to each heater. A by-pass duct and a swing 

 valve enable any desired proportion of normal 

 air to be forced direct into the building without 

 going through the heater. This provision en- 

 ables the temperature in the building to be kept 

 under control. The air from the heaters and 

 by-passes is forced up through the four floors 

 to the roof space. The four large circulating 

 fans draw most of the air from the roof space 

 down again into the ground floor, while the rest 

 passes out through t w Q louvred turrets in tho 



