paid for by a correspondingly larger area of cultivation
and by future soil amendment. For the rest, the richer and deeper
the soil the less the expense of maintaining soil fertility.

The preparatory work of establishing an orchard is light, provided
the location is not one demanding the opening of drainage canals,
and on lands of good porosity it involves neither subsoiling nor a
deeper plowing than to effectually cover the sod or any minor weed
growths with which it may be covered.

It has long been the reprehensible practice of cocoanut growers to
merely dig pits, manure them, set the plants therein, and permit
the intervening lands (except immediately about the trees) to run to
weeds or jungle.

In the Philippines the native planter has not yet progressed beyond
the pit stage, nor do his subsequent cultural activities include more
than the occasional "boloing" of such weeds as threaten to choke and
exterminate the young plants.

Fortunately it will not be long till the force and influence of
example are sure to be felt by our own planters. The progressive
German colonist of Kamerun, German East Africa, and the South
Pacific Islands, as well as the French in Congo and Madagascar,
are vigorously practicing conventional, modern orchard methods in
the treatment of their cocoanut groves, and it is amazing to read
of discussions between Ceylon and Indian nut growers as to the best
method of tethering cattle upon cocoanut palms in pasture, so as to
obtain the most benefit from their excreta.

With an intelligent study of the plant and its characteristics
it is believed that our native planter may put into practical use
the knowledge that the veteran Indian planter has in fifty years
failed to learn or utilize. He will learn that in time the entire
superficies of his orchard will be required by the wide-spreading,
surface-feeding roots of the trees, and that pasture crops of any
kind, grown for any purpose other than soiling or for green manuring,
are prejudicial to future success. He will know that the initial
preparation of all of his orchard and its continuous maintenance in
good cultivation are essential not only to the future welfare of
his trees but as a necessary means in connection with a judicious
intermediate crop rotation.

Hence the preparatory requirements may be summed up as such preliminary
soil breaking as would be required for a corn crop in similar lands,
succeeded by such superficial plowings and