be accomplished. The earlier crops
of nuts should all be taken with extension cutters or from ladders. No
shoulders for climbing should be cut in any tree, the stem of which
has not become dense, hard, and woody. Cut when the wood is the least
bit succulent, they become inviting points of attack for borers.

With these reservations, there is everything to commend the practice
of shouldering the tree, as offering the safest, most expeditious
and economical way of making it possible to climb and secure the
harvest. It is, of course, understood that the cuts should be made
sloping outward, so as not to collect moisture and invite decay,
and no larger than is strictly necessary for the purpose.

MANURING. [5]

The manuring problem must be met and solved by the best resources at
our command. The writer has had pointed out hundred of trees that,
wholly guiltless of any direct application of manure, have borne
excellent crops for many successive years; but he has also seen
hundreds of others in their very prime, at thirty years, which once
produced a hundred select nuts per year, now producing fluctuating
and uncertain crops of fifteen to thirty inferior fruits.

Time and again native growers have told me of the large and uniformly
continuous crops of nuts from the trees immediately overshadowing their
dwellings and, although some have attributed this to a sentimental
appreciation and gratitude on the part of the palm at being made one
of the family of the owner, a few were sensible enough to realize
that it came of the opportunity that those particular trees had to
get the manurial benefit of the household sewage and waste.

Yet, the lesson is still unlearned and, after much diligent inquiry,
I have yet to find a nut grower in the Philippines who at any time
(except at planting) makes direct and systematic application of manure
to his trees.

In India, Ceylon, the Penang Peninsula, and Cochin China, where the
tree has been cultivated for generations, the most that was ever
attempted until very recently was to throw a little manure in the
hole where the tree was planted, and for all future time to depend
on the inferior, grass-made droppings of a few cattle tethered among
the trees, to compensate for the half million or more nuts that a
hectare of fairly productive trees should yield during their normal
bearing life.

Upon suitable cocoanut soils--i. e., those that are light and
permeable--common salt is positivel