ly be compared to the mast of a ship with round top
and topmast without shrouds to support it. Ashes and fish are good
manures for it.

The coco-nut is essentially a maritime plant, and is always one of the
first to make its appearance on coral and other new islands in
tropical seas, the nut being floated to them, and rather benefiting
than otherwise by its immersion in the salt water. Silex and soda are
the two principal salts which the coco-nut abstracts from the soil,
and hence, where these do not exist in great abundance, the tree does
not thrive well. I do not know myself what is the practice in Ceylon,
but in Brazil, Dr. Gardner tells me, salt is very generally applied to
the coco-nut when planted. Far in the interior, he states, he has seen
as much as half a bushel applied to a single tree, and that too when
it cost about 2s. a pound, from the great distance it had to be
brought. That the application, therefore, of salt, of seaweed, and
saline mud, does more than supply soda, must be very evident, if we
only recollect how difficult it is to dry any part of our dress that
has been soaked in salt water, and what effect damp weather has on
table salt, which, in a balance, has often been made use of as an
hydrometer. Moisture is always attracted by salt, and the more sea mud
and other such little matters that coco-nut planters can apply round
the roots of their trees, there will most assuredly be the less
occasion for watering them in the dry season. Sea weed contains but
very little fibrous matter, being chiefly composed of mucilage and
water; and the experiments of Sir J. Pringle and Mr. C. W. Johnson,
prove that salt in small quantities assists the decomposition of both
animal and vegetable substances. Decomposed poonac, or oil-cake, is
one of the best manures that can be applied, as it returns to the soil
the component parts of which it has beau deprived to form the fruit.

The primary direction of the planter's industry will be to the
establishment of a nursery of young plants. In Ceylon, for this
purpose, the nuts are placed in squares of 400, covered with one inch
of sand, or salt mud; are watered daily till the young shoots appear,
and are planted out after the rains in September. Sand and salt mud
are to be found on almost all the coasts where it would be desirable
to plant nuts, and if they are put into the ground at the commencement
of the rainy season, artificial watering will scarcely be necessary.
Any