The following pages are written chiefly in the interests of the
planter, but the writer feels that the great agricultural importance
which the cocoanut palm is bound to assume in these Islands is
sufficient to justify the presentation of some of its history and
botany.
For that part of the bulletin which touches upon the botany of the
cocoanut I am indebted to Don Regino Garcia, associate botanist of the
Forestry Bureau; for that relating to its products and local uses, to
the courtesy of manufacturers in Laguna; and, for the rest, to personal
experience and observations made in Laguna Province and in the southern
Visayan Islands where, as elsewhere in this Archipelago, the cocoanut
may properly be considered a spontaneous and not a cultivated product.