the sea-beach so thickly with
coconut-trees that their branches touch each other, whilst the interior
parts, though not on a higher level, are entirely free from them. This
beyond a doubt is occasioned by the accidental floating of the nuts to
the shore, where they are planted by the hand of nature, shoot up, and
bear fruit; which, falling when it arrives at maturity, causes a
successive reproduction. Where uninhabited, as is the case with Pulo
Mego, one of the southernmost, the nuts become a prey to the rats and
squirrels unless when occasionally disturbed by the crews of vessels
which go thither to collect cargoes for market on the mainland. In the
same manner, as we are told by Flacourt,* they have been thrown upon a
coast of Madagascar and are not there indigenous; as I have been also
assured by a native. Yet it appears that the natives call it voaniou,
which is precisely the name by which it is familiarly known in Sumatra,
being buah-nior; and v being uniformly substituted for b, and f for p, in
the numerous Malayan words occurring in the language of the former
island. On the other hand the singular production to which the
appellation of sea-coconut (kalapa laut) has been given, and which is
known to be the fruit of a species of borassus growing in one of the
Seychelles Islands,** not far from Madagascar, are sometimes floated as
far as the Malayan coasts, where they are supposed to be natives of the
ocean and were held in high veneration for their miraculous effects in
medicine until, about the year 1772, a large cargo of them was brought to
Bencoolen by a French vessel, when their character soon fell with their
price.

(*Footnote. Histoire de l'isle Madagascar page 127.)

(*Footnote. See a particular description of the sea-coconut with plates
in the Voyage a la Nouvelle Guinee par Sonnerat page 3.)

PINANG OR BETEL-NUT.

The pinang (Areca catechu L.) or betel-nut-tree (as it is usually, but
improperly, called, the betel being a different plant) is in its mode of
growth and appearance not unlike the coconut. It is however straighter in
the stem, smaller in proportion to the height, and more graceful. The
fruit, of which the varieties are numerous (such as pinang betul, pinang
ambun, and pinang wangi), is in its outer coat about the size of a plum;
the nut something less than that of the nutmeg but rounder. This is eaten
with the leaf of the sirih or betel (Piper betel L.) a claiming plant
whose leaf has a str