he smoking of tobacco or
any of the allied vices. To cut the nut neatly an instrument is used
like an enormous pair of nutcrackers with a sharp cutting edge. The lime
should be made from oyster shells and it must be freshly burned and
slaked. Exposure to the air soon spoils it, so a small, air-tight tin
box is required to keep it in. Lastly, the betel leaf must be fresh,
and in a hot climate green leaves do not keep their freshness without
special care.

But the necessity for attending to all these matters no doubt adds
greatly to the interest which a chewer of _pan supari_ is able to find
in life. Moreover, his taste and wealth have scope for expression in the
elegance of his appointments, and by these you may generally judge of a
man's rank and means. A well-to-do Mahratta cartman will carry in his
waistband a sort of bijou hold-all of coloured cloth, which, when
unrolled, displays neat pockets of different forms for the leaves,
broken nuts, lime box, spices, etc.; but a native magistrate, who goes
about attended by a peon and need not carry his own things, will have a
box of polished brass, or even silver, divided into compartments.

One may easily infer that to meet such a universal want there must be a
correspondingly great industry, and the cultivation of the betel nut is
indeed a great industry, and a most beautiful one. Surely since Adam
first began to till the ground in the sweat of his face, his children
have found no tillage so Eden-like as this. India has produced no Virgil
to take the common charms of a farmer's life and put them into immortal
song, so we search her literature in vain to learn how her simple,
rustic people feel about these things, and in what we see of their life
there is little sign that they feel about them at all; but when the
Englishman, wandering, gun in hand, up a steaming valley among
forest-clad hills, suddenly finds the path lead him into a betel nut
garden, with no wire fence, or locked gate, or inhospitable notice
threatening prosecution to trespassers, he feels as if he had entered
some region of bliss where the earthly senses are too narrow for the
delights that press for entrance to the soul.

In the first place, the areca nut palm is almost, if not altogether, the
most graceful of all its graceful tribe. Unlike the coconut, it grows as
erect as a flagstaff, and the effect of this is increased by its extreme
slenderness, for though it may attain a height of fifty feet, its