MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 157 



When tapping for palm wine, the natives often say to her, "Princess, have pity 

 upon us, and increase your tears." No other ti-ee is so completely invested 

 with human attributes. Both Warueck (^) and Braudstetter (") mention the 

 fact that the Batak word for the sugar-palm, bagot, is the usual euphemism 

 for a woman's breasts. In Toba, the carved representations of the female 

 breast on the fronts of certain houses are called hagot ni rocma, (breasts of 

 the house). Only the closest association with this most useful palm would 

 have led to its personification and to the invention of the Batak counterpart 

 of the Daphne myth. 



Aside from the uses already mentioned, the Batak use the roots of the 

 hagot in basket maldng, the hollow trunk for drains, the hard, outer wood for 

 flooring, the split midribs for laths, and the leaflets for thatch. The trunk is 

 clothed with black fibres, idjoelc, which make a wonderfully durable and 

 sightly roofing material, and can also be woven into twine and rope. The 

 longer fibers serve as strings for the native two-stringed lute, the kasapi, and 

 the coarse, indurated ones for writing pens. If an altar {andjapan) is set 

 up, where evil spirits are propitiated by offerings, the most conspicuous item 

 in its construction is a feathery leaf of hagot. On occasions when the offering 

 consists only of sirih (pepper leaf, betel-nut, lime, and tobacco, done up in 

 quids, for chewing) it is stuck into notches in the midrib of a sugar-palm leaf, 

 which is placed obliquely in the ground and adorned with certain magical 

 apparatus. Such an offering is called boeloeng ni hagot (leaf of the sugar- 

 palm ) . 



From certain accounts of Arenga in other parts of Indonesia, it must be 

 inferred that the tree is not planted, but utilized only where it is found wild. 

 Such is not the case in Asahan, where it has a definite place in the simple 

 crop rotation of Batak agriculture. It is likewise planted about the villages 

 in the more densely populated Toba region. In the heart of the Batak lands, 

 around the southern end of Toba Lake, agriculture is on a relatively high 

 plane. Irrigated terraced rice fields extend as far as the eye can see, between 

 the beautiful, island-like groves of bamboo, palms, and other useful trees, 

 among which the villages are concealed. Between this densely populated 

 region and the jungles of the East coast there are great stretches of rolling 

 grassland, covered by various coarse, tall grasses called lalang in Malay. To 

 one who has observed how these grasses occupy the land to the exclusion of 

 other vegetation, when once they have invaded a cleared area, it seems not 

 unreasonable to believe that the desolate lalang region represents the final 

 scene in a cycle of changes set up by the destructive lading agriculture 

 about to be described. 



For centuries the population of the highlands has been overflowing into 

 the low, coastal belt. Here conditions have not favored the development of a 

 dense population based upon permanent agriculture. Consequently the inhabi- 

 tants show a cukural degeneration, as far as agriculture is concerned. Com- 



