PALM OF TIMBUCTOO. 155 



readily suggest itself to anybody wishing to partake of it ; but 

 there is something peculiar in eating the seedlings, to say nothing 

 of the extraction of flour from them. Here the question in- 

 voluntarily arises : " Is the idea of eating them of native growth, 

 or has it been derived from the East Indies ? " I am not inclined 

 to give the negroes much credit for inventive genius, but I think 

 in this instance we must assign it to them. For if the applications 

 of this palm had been adopted from the Palmyra, it is not likely 

 that the most useful one of them, the extracting of toddy for 

 making wine, vinegar, yeast, spirits and sugar, would have been 

 overlooked. But neither of the B. ? JEthiopum nor of any other 

 African palm do I find it recorded that they serve for that pur- 

 pose ; all we hear is, that the date-tree in Northern Africa, after 

 the heart of its leaves has been cut out, accumulates a thick, 

 sweetish, and refreshing sap ("Lagbi"), of a slightly purgative 

 tendency ; and that the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands, 

 the G-uanches, knew how to prepare from it a beverage, which 

 replaced the grape wine, and also vinegar, honey, and sugar ; but 

 that branch of industry has long since become extinct, and even 

 the method by which the sap was obtained has not been handed 

 down to us : as we are informed, however, by Viera, that each 

 tree yielded about a small caskful, it is not impossible that it may 

 have been procured as it is still in Northern Africa, and that 

 whenever sap was required, at least one tree had to be sacrificed. 

 The extraction of toddy seems to be peculiarly Asiatic : in America 

 it is unknown, for the so-called "palm- wine " of that country is 

 not obtained by means of the spadix from a living tree, as is the 

 case with genuine toddy, but by a hole cut under the crown of a 

 tree previously felled. Thus we find that all the three continents, 

 chiefly inhabited by these princes of the vegetable kingdom, prac- 

 tise one principal method of extracting the saccharine matter in 

 which many of the palms abound. Both the Africans and the 

 Americans kill the tree, the sap of which they procure, the former 

 by destroying its terminal bud, the latter by felling its trunk : 

 only the Asiatics preserve it by merely cutting its spadix, and 

 allowing the sap to ooze out through the wounded parts. The 

 wanton destruction of the trees by the one party, and the careful 

 husbanding of them by the other, is the reason why Africa and 

 America have never furnished, and as long as the present process 

 of destruction is continued, will never furnish any palm-sugar, a 

 product of which Asia sends to Europe alone several thousand 

 tons annually. 



