y injurious. In support of this
contention, I will state that salt in solution will break up and
freely combine with lime, making equally soluble chlorids of lime
which, of course, freely leach out in such a soil and carry down
to unavailable depths these salts, invaluable as necessary bases
to render assimilable most plant foods; and that, on this account,
commercial manures containing large amounts of salt, are always to
be used with much discretion, owing to the danger of impoverishing
the supply of necessary lime in the soil.

Finally, so injurious is the direct application of salt to the roots
of most plants that the invariable custom of trained planters (who,
for the sake of the potash contained, are compelled to use crude
Stassfurt mineral manures, which contain large quantities of common
salt) is to apply it a very considerable time before the crop is
planted, in order that this deleterious agent should be well leached
and washed away from the immediate field of root activity.

That the cocoanut is able to take up large quantities of salt may not
be disputed. That the character of its root is such as to enable it to
do so without the injury that would occur to most cultivated plants
I have previously shown, while the history of the cocoanut's inland
career, and the records of agricultural chemistry, both conclusively
point to the fact that its presence is an incident that in no way
contributes to the health, vigor, or fruitfulness of the tree.

Mr. Cochran's analysis, based upon the unit of 1,000 average nuts,
weighing in the aggregate 3,125 pounds, discloses a drain upon soil
fertility for that number, amounting in round numbers to--

Pounds.

Nitrogen 8 1/4
Potash 17
Phosphoric acid 3

Reducing this to crop and area, and taking 60 fruits per annum per tree
as a fair mean for the bearing groves in our cocoanut districts and
on those rare estates where a systematic spacing of about 173 trees
to the hectare has been made, we should have an annual harvest of
10,300 nuts, or, stated in round numbers, 10,000, which will exhaust
each year from the soil a total of--

Pounds.

Nitrogen 82 1/2
Potash 170
Phosphoric acid 30

The cocoanut, therefore, while a good feeder, may not be classed with
the most depleting of field crops.

To make this clear I