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Edible Products 



The coconut palm beat's all the year, the flowers and mature nuts being seen 

 on Lhe same palm at all times, but, as a matter of convenience, generally only two 

 pickings per year are made, when only the mature nuts are supposed to be thrown 

 down. In Sumatra the Malays have trained baboons to this work so effectively that 

 only fully matured nuts are picked, but in Trinidad our more intelligent picket- 

 knows that the more nuts per tree he picks the fewer will be the number of trees he 

 will have to climb, with the result that even under constant supervision a consider- 

 able number of immature nuts are picked. As such nuts are inferior for copra or oil 

 making, and if shipped depreciate the value of our nuts in the markets, this has 

 become a serious problem and one which the highest authorities in Trinidad think 

 can be solved only by allowing the trees to drop their nuts, and employing men only 

 to free the crowns of the trees once annually of dry spath.es, stalks, leaves, and ants' 

 nests. 



The nuts having been picked, they are collected into convenient heaps where 

 they are either opened and the kernel removed when copra or oil is to be made, 

 or husked and selected if nuts are to be shipped, the kernels being conveyed to the 

 drying house or the nuts to the shipping plaee. 



The copra-drying house is similar to the ordinary cacao drying house, and 

 the only manipulation required in drying copra is frequently to stir and turn over 

 the pieces so that all parts may be exposed to the drying influence of the sun and 

 wind. From five to ten days may be required to dry copra thoroughly, the time 

 depending upon the sunshine and atmospheric conditions. The problem of arti- 

 ficially drying copra is simple compared with that of drying cacao, but from the 

 design of some of the artificial drying houses one sees in Trinidad it is aparent that 

 it has been misunderstood by many. Heat is of secondary importance, being only 

 useful in enabling the large volume of dry air, which is essential, to absorb more 

 moisture than it otherwise would in its passage through the copra : whereas, usually, 

 heat takes the first place, and ventilation or the means of circulating dry air and 

 removing the moist air has been omitted or given a secondary place. 



The process of manufacturing oil from copra is simple, it being necessary 

 only to disintegrate the copra so as to rupture the oil cells, the meal being then 

 placed in bags and subjected to a pressure of about 2 tons to the square inch in 

 hydraulic presses until the flow of oil ceases. A high extraction depends upon the 

 degree of fineness to which the copra can be reduced, or, in other words, the com- 

 plete rupture of all oil cells. From a plantation's own copra an extraction of 56 

 gallons of oil per ton of copra may be expected, and from ordinary commercial copra 

 a fair average extraction would be 153 gallons per ton, and in most plantation oil 

 factories the value of the residual meal as a stock food covers the cost of manufac- 

 turing oil. 



As a very large proportion of the oil manufactured is sold locally, where the 

 demand does not call for a high quality, little attention has been given to refining, 

 simple filtration or subsiding being resorted to ; but the time will come when 

 higher prices will be obtained for oil of high quality, and it would be well for coco- 

 nut planters to be prepared to take advantage of them. High-class oil can be made 

 cheaply by the use of Fuller's earth in the filtration of oil made from good copra, 

 but good copra can be made with certainty only by artificial drying, and although 

 sun-drying houses will always be useful, an artificial drier can always be run 

 economically as an adjunct to an oil factory, and every factory should be equipped 

 with one. 



There are good reasons why many of the items exported under the head 

 " coconuts " from other coconut producing countries cannot be so exported here ; 

 for example, dessicated nut, the manufacture of which requires much cheap labour ; 



