be shaded for one and even two years, and no lalang grass must be permitted to encroach on their roots.  A nursery must be always held in readiness to supply the numerous vacancies which will occur from deaths and accidents.  The following may be considered the average cost of a plantation, until it comes into bearing:—­

FIRST COST—­100 ORLONGS OF LAND. 
Spanish dollars. 
Purchase money of land, ready for planting 1,000
7,000 nuts at 11/2 dollars, per 100 105
Houses of coolies, carts, buffaloes, &c., &c. 100
-----
Spanish dollars 1,205

YEARLY COST OF SEVEN YEARS.

First year, 10 laborers at 3 dollars per month, including
carts, &c. 360
Wear and tear of buildings, carts, and implements 50
Overseer, at 7 dollars per month 84
Quit rent, average 50
Nursery and contingencies 50
-----
Total per annum 594
Seven years at the rate will be 4,158
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Total, Spanish dollars 4,752

To this sum interest will have to be added, making, perhaps, a sum total of 6,000 Spanish dollars, and this estimate will make each tree, up to its coming into bearing, cost one Spanish dollar at the lowest.  The young tree requires manure, such as putrid fish and stimulating compounds, containing a portion of salt.  On the Coromandel coast, the natives put a handful of salt below each nut on planting it.

The cultivators of Kiddah adopt a very slovenly expedient for collecting the fruit.  Instead of climbing the tree in the manner practised by the natives on the Coromandel coast, by help of a hoop passing round the tree and the body of the climber—­and a ligature so connecting the feet as will enable him to clasp the tree with them—­the Malays cut deep notches or steps in the trunk, in a zig-zag manner, sufficient to support the toes or the side of the foot, and thus ascend with the extra, aid only of their arms.  This mode is also a dangerous one, as a false step, when near the top of a high tree, generally precipitates the climber to the ground.  This notching cannot prove otherwise than injurious to the tree.  But the besetting sin of the planter of coco-nuts, and other productive trees, is that of crowding.  Coco-nut trees, whose roots occupy, when full grown, circles of forty to fifty feet in diameter, may often be found planted within eight or ten feet of each other; and in the native campongs all sorts of indigenous fruit trees are jumbled together, with so little space to spread in, that they mostly assume the aspect of forest trees, and yield but sparing crops.

The common kinds of the coco-nut, under