Bidspirit auction | THE COCONUT PALM. THE SCIENCE

THE COCONUT PALM. THE SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF COCONUT CULTIVATION. London, John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, Ltd. 1923. xvi, 262, [ii] pages. 26 x 17 cm. E. - Scientific and practical manual on the coconut palm, divided into three parts: the first devoted to the botanical description of the tree and its varieties; the second dealing with the management of coconut palm plantations; the third describing the products of the palm and their commercial exploitation. A reference work for colonial agronomy of tropical crops, written by a specialist from Ceylon, where the coconut palm had long been one of the pillars of the island's economy. Illustrated with 45 lithographs of scientific value and high quality, in black-and-white and in colour, on coated paper, together with two statistical charts — a body of images of interest both to natural history and to collectors of colonial scientific illustration. This copy from the library of the Companhia do Boror, the great coconut palm plantation company which, founded in 1899 in Zambézia, went on to manage the largest coconut palm estates in Mozambique, near Nampula, with over two million coconut palms in the most prosperous years of its activity. As such, it constitutes a direct document of Lusophone colonial agricultural practice in Southern Africa — and a copy that forms a natural pair with O Coqueiro by José Maria de Sá (Nova Goa, 1898), a work from the same library, where the scientific knowledge of the coconut palm from the Portuguese colonial tradition meets that of the British tradition. Publisher's binding.