ghtful person cannot fail to be impressed with the remarkable
adaptation of the palm family to the requirements of the natives of
this region. Take, for instance, the cocoanut-tree, and realize for a
moment its bountiful, beneficent products. It affords never-failing
water in an always thirsty clime. Nutritious and palatable cream is
obtained from its luscious nut; toddy to refresh the weary traveler,
or arrack when fermented, comes from the same source, besides a rich
oil for various domestic uses. Thus we have five distinct products
from the cocoanut-tree, while the wood of the trunk itself affords
material for many uses. The oriental poet designates three hundred
different purposes to which the palm and its fruit can be profitably
applied. The green nut contains nearly a pint of cool, sweet water;
cool in the hottest weather, if partaken of when it is first gathered
from the tree. The inner rind of the ripe nut, when reduced to a
pulp, yields under pressure a cup of delicious cream. The toddy is sap
produced from the buds thus divested, instead of permitting them to
ripen and form the final nut. When it is first drawn, this liquid is
pleasant and refreshing, like the newly expressed juice of the grape,
or still more like Mexican pulque, produced by the American aloe,
which is the universal tipple of the people south of the Rio Grande.
By fermentation of the liquids obtained from the buds of the palm and
from the stout stalk of the aloe, it becomes like alcohol, and is
decidedly intoxicating. Cocoanut oil, produced from the fully ripe and
dried meat of the nut, is a great staple of export from Colombo and
Point de Galle. Each cocoanut-tree produces on an average from fifty
to a hundred full and perfect nuts, yielding about a score the first
year of its coming into bearing.

The cocoanut palm is the most common and most valuable of this family
of trees, and next to it is the areca. The top of the former always
bends gracefully towards the earth, affording the Eastern poets a
synonym for humility, while the stem of the latter is quite remarkable
for its perfectly upright form. Undoubtedly the cocoa palm does thrive
best where it gets the influence of the sea breezes tinctured with the
salt of the ocean, but it is a mistake to suppose that this tree does
not thrive inland in Ceylon. Some of the finest specimens to be met
with are in the central province of the island, between Kandy and
Trincomalee.

The talipot palm is