24 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
grand nombre; mais la grappe de fruits, qu'on nomme régime, est par 
sa richesse un véritable ornement pour cet ordre.” 
One of the cases in the Museum of the Royal Gardens, contains a 
fine cluster (régime) of these fruits, together with some of the many 
products of the plant. Our stoves, too, exhibit several healthy young 
plants, from two to eight or ten feet high; most of them still seem sprout- 
ing from the husk of the fruit, which, enclosing the seed, was partially 
buried in the soil to induce germination. Beyond a certain age, how- 
ever, probably eight or ten years, the cocoa-nut trees are generally found 
to sicken and die, for want of a saline atmosphere; these palms in tropical 
regions always affecting the vicinity of the sea or saline rivers, never 
flourishing far inland. 
Our object in the present notice is to give a brief account of the 
mode of extracting the Toddy or Palm-wine from this tree, as practised 
in the Madras Peninsula; and this we are enabled to do through the 
kindness of J. M. Strachan, Esq., of Teddington Grove, Middlesex, 
who has presented to our Museum an excellent drawing made on the 
spot, of Toddymen at their labour (copied at our Tab. I.), together 
with the implements employed for this purpose (represented at our 
Tab. IL), accompanied by explanatory notes. These notes, and our 
illustrative plates, will be better understood if we first extract from 
Dr. Buchanan Hamilton’s * Travels in Malabar’ his account of the 
process :— 
«The Cocoa-nut Palm, after having been transplanted, begins to bear in 
from thirteen to sixteen years. It continues in full vigour for forty years, 
and lives for about thirty years more, but is then constantly on the decline. 
When the trees show flower for the first time, a trial is made by 
cutting a young flowering-branch, to ascertain whether it be fit for 
producing Palm-wine. If the incision bleeds, it is fit for the latter purpose, 
and is more valuable than a tree whose flower-branch, when cut, con- 
tinues dry and is fit only for producing nuts. The Palms fit for wine 
are then let to the Tiars, or Shanars, who extract the juice and boil it 
down to Jaggary, or distil it to extract Arrack. In a good soil the trees 
yield juice all the year; but on a poor soil they are exhausted in six 
months. A clever workman can manage thirty or forty trees, and pays 
annually for each from one to one and a half fanam. When the spadix, 
or flowering-branch, is half shot, and the spatha, or covering of the 
flowers, is not yet opened, the Tiar cuts off its point, binds the stump 
