40 
The Philippine Journal of Science 
1917 
Among the most dreaded foes of Cocos nucifera, the wild hogs 
must be reckoned. With respect to these we read in Ferguson 
an extract from the Ceylon Examiner, as follows: 
Amongst the enemies of the coconut tree the wild pig has the first place. 
Not only because he is the most destructive to young plantations, I 
suppose, but because he is about the earliest enemy that the plant has 
to contend against. 
It is certain that on the coasts of Asia and on the shores of 
the Malayan and Papuan islands, where the wild pig is exces- 
sively abundant, not a single coconut would succeed in producing 
an adult plant without the protection of man, even though all 
the other conditions were favorable. There are besides the 
pigs other mammals such as certain rodents and herbivorous 
marsupials, which are very injurious to the coconut; among the 
last I learn that in New Guinea the “little flying opossum” 
(Belidens ariel) is in the habit of completely emptying the ripe 
nuts. It is noteworthy, also, that whole plantations of coconut 
palms can be utterly ruined by the injury caused to the adult 
plant by two very dangerous insects, the red beetle {Rhynchoph- 
orus fe7'rugineus) and the black beetle {Oi'yctes rhinoceros) 
That the coconut palm not only can exist, but can prosper 
without man’s help and can even produce finer and larger fruits 
than in places where it is carefully cultivated, is clearly evidenced 
by the dimensions of the coconuts of the Palmyras which I 
have already described. This fact may be attributed to the very 
special conditions inherent in the soil of the Palmyras ; for though 
at first sight one would be inclined to think that Cocos nucifera, 
which is so exacting a plant as to fertilizing elements, could 
draw very little aliment from a soil composed solely of disinte- 
grated coralline rock, of which rock the islands are formed, it 
does in fact find abundant nutrition therein. 
The fact is that in coral islands, in addition to the detritus 
of various kinds, all capable of being transformed into humus, 
which the sea may have brought to them, the soil which forms 
upon them may contain fertilizing substances due to the remains 
of animals that have contributed to the formation of the reef; 
“ All about the Coconut, 137. 
^ How the presence of an insect can impede the acclimatization of a 
plant in a new region, the following fact demonstrates. For several years 
I cultivated Aubrietia deltoidea, a pretty Cruciferae, native to southern 
Italy, but unknown in Tuscany, which maintained and multiplied itself 
upon a rockery without any help, in my garden near Florence; until it 
was attacked one spring by the larva of a small beetle, Ademonia tanaceti, 
which devoured it to its last leaf, since which it has never reappeared. 
