It is said that they should be allowed from 20 to 30 feet space apart, but I will calculate their return when planted 27 feet apart every way.  This will give 58 coco-nut trees per acre.  If manured, for the first two years, with seaweed and salt mud, and supplied with water in dry weather, there need be no loss, and the plants will thrive the better.  The land must be kept clear of weeds till the plants are matured, in order to permit them abundance of air and light.  In five years, when well cared for, the flower may be expected, but the plants will not be in full bearing before the seventh or eighth year.  From 50 to 80 nuts are the annual crop of a tree; but I will calculate at the lowest rate.  One hundred nuts will yield, when the oil is properly expressed, at least two gallons and a half.  I shall not take into account the making of jaggery sugar and toddy, or spirit from the sap, as I do not consider that the manufacture would be remunerative; and it must be attended with much trouble, besides requiring a great deal of care and some skill.

Take the case now of a plantation of 100 acres in extent.  This would give us 5,800 trees, which, at 50 nuts per tree, 290,000 nuts, at 21/2 gallons of oil per hundred, would yield 7,250 gallons of oil, the value of which any person may calculate, but which, at the low rate of 3s. over charges, would furnish, as the gross plantation return in oil, a sum of L1,087 10s. sterling.  If the cultivator, instead of making his produce into oil, were to sell it in its natural state, his gross return in the West Indies would be nearly L600 sterling, at the rate of ten dollars per thousand.

Either of these sums would be a handsome return from 100 acres of any land, requiring no cultivation or care whatever, after the fourth year, and yielding the same amount for upwards of half a century!  But this is not all.  An outlay of a few pounds will secure other advantages, and ought to enable the owner of a coco-nut plantation to turn his gross receipts for oil into nett profits.  The coir made from the husk of the nut is calculated to realise nearly one-fourth of the proceeds of the oil, but if we put it down at one-fifth, we shall have, in addition to the value of the oil, L217 10s., thus making a total of L1,305 sterling.  If we obtained 60 nuts from each tree, the return would be L1,566 sterling, and if 75, L1,957 8s. sterling; and this from 100 acres of sea side sand!  But even this does not exhibit the whole return of this article of culture.  Each nut may be calculated to give a quarter of a pound of poonac, or oil-cake, being the refuse after expression, fit for feeding all kinds of stock, which may be estimated as worth L10 per ton.  We must, therefore, add on this account to our first calculation, the sum of say L325; to the second, L390; and to the third, L485.  This would give, in round numbers, the entire returns of the 100 acres planted:—­At 50 nuts per tree, L1,630; at 60 ditto, L1,957; at 75, ditto, L2,446.