Edible Products. 



114 



[August, 1911, 



eat the grass and their excrement is 

 scattered, around the plantation and 

 used as fertilizer. 



Fertilizers. 

 The coconut makes good returns when 

 fertilized ; but in the Philippines fertiliz- 

 ing has never been done at least on p, 

 commercial scale. According to Semler, 

 the author of the Tropische A grikuUur, 

 when a tree yielding forty nuts per 

 year is fertilized with a good stable 

 manure, it will increase its production 

 to fifty, and another yielding eighty will 

 increase it to one hundred during the 

 same length of time. The value of 

 fertilizers can be seen right here, and 

 we recommend to our farmers the use of 

 any kind available. In some places 

 where coconut oil is made there are oil 

 factories that extract the oil for nothing 

 and make their profit with the oil cake, 

 called poonac in India. They sell this 

 at high prices, to be used either directly 

 as fertilizer or as a concentrate for live- 

 stock ; in the second case the excrement 

 of the animals is afterwards used 

 as fertilizer. In these countries oil 

 factories prove a success for the simple 

 reason that they can dispose of their 

 by-product as well as of the oil. The 

 case in the Philippines is entirely 

 different. So long as no application is 

 given the oil cake, no oil factories can 

 thrive well in these Islands. There are 

 also commercial fertilizers sold by Behn 

 Meyer & Co,, Kerkhoven & Co., and 

 others. The use of such fertilizers in- 

 volves some expenditure of money, and 

 we doubt if our farmers will use them, 

 on a large scale. But we are sure that 

 they can be induced to use leguminous 

 plants for such purposes. These plants 

 are nitrogen-fixers, better than ordinary 

 manure as a provider of nitrogen. 



In case stable manures are used as 

 fertilizers, they are applied by broad- 

 casting fifty cubic decimeters of the 

 manure mixed with ashes, around each 

 tree, and the ground hoed over. In 

 Ceylon, cattle are fed grasses from the 

 plantation, and their excrement is used 

 as above described. Better results will 

 be obtained if the animals are fed cn 

 leguminous forage crops planted in the 

 coconut groves and their manure is left 

 on the gound as a fertilizer. When 

 commercial fertilizers are used the 

 amount to be applied must be less and 

 will depend upon their composition. 

 The time of application as recommended 

 by Semler is after transplanting on poor 

 grounds and before flowering on rich 

 ones- The period during which their 

 results show varies from three to six 

 years. 



Enemies. 



The coconut has two principal insect 

 enemies in the Philippines, the Oryctes 

 rhinoceros, commouly called uang, and 

 Rhynchophorus ferrugmeus, the red 

 beetle, and also called uang by many. 

 In the case of the former the adult 

 insect does the damage, and in that of 

 the latter the larvae. In the College of 

 Agriculture we have seen the case of a 

 tree attacked by the larvae of the uang 

 (uryctes), and the red beetle. The latter 

 began the damage, and when the tree 

 had started to decay the Otyctes laid 

 its eggs, and its larvae completed the 

 destruction. The red beetle is far more 

 dangerous than the Oryctes, for the 

 latter's attack can be detected by the 

 hole it makes and by the ragged appear- 

 ance of the young leaves. But the 

 symptoms of the attack by the red 

 beetle are hard to see and tups of trees 

 appearing healthy may suddenly be 

 blown down by a strong wind. The 

 cabbage of such trees is then seen to be 

 rotten and full of pupae of the red 

 beetle. The red beetle, on the other 

 hand, never makes its holes ou the old 

 tissue of the tree to lay its eggs, but 

 almost always takes advantage of those 

 made by the Oryctes ; or when the soft 

 tissues around the bases of leaves are 

 exposed, makes its hole there. It is 

 therefore doubly necessary to suppress 

 the Oryctes, thereby fieeiug our plant- 

 ations of two most dangerous enemies. 



The best remedy for these insects is to 

 bum all decayed trees, and other decay- 

 ing stuff, keeping the plantation in a 

 good sanitary condition. Trees attacked 

 beyond recovery must be cut down and 

 burned. Wounds on trees must be filled 

 with cement or other substance, prefer- 

 ably poisonous to the insect. The 

 practice of the tuba-makers of making 

 incisions on trees to facilitate climbing 

 them is a fruitful source of trouble, and 

 must, therefore, be condemned. The 

 young tissues around the bases of leaves 

 must not be exposed to the attack of 

 the red beetle by taking away the 

 fibrous stuff around them. By reducing 

 the number of these insects the 

 damage done by them will be reduced. 

 Preventive measures are always the 

 best. 



There also exists in these islands the 

 Bud-rot, or the rotting of the cabbage, 

 due probably to bacteria. This disease 

 is highly infectious. Its symptoms, 

 propagation, the method of combating, 

 and the history of its appearance in the 

 province of La Laguna are all described 

 in a paper of Dr, E. B. Copeland, now 



