162 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



When the consistency of the boiling liquid is such that it hardens when 

 dropped into cold water, it is poured into the moulds. The latter are a series 

 .of holes carved in a plank from the exceedingly heavy, fine-grained, heart- 

 wood of one of the jungle trees. The holes are accurately made, and highly 

 polished. Before the boiling syrup is poured into them they are wet with 

 cold water, so that the cakes of sugar will not adhere to the wood. The set 

 of moulds is called tocangan, and as far as my information goes, it is charac- 

 teristic of the region. The cakes of sugar have the shape of a truncated cone, 

 a couple of inches across the base. Each one is a kotoel. They are done up 

 in packages of two, with the bases together, and are wrapped in a banana-leaf 

 package (tiroesan) which is so skillfully put up that it is practically air-tight. 

 The sugar is very nicely preserved as long as it is hung up, preferably in the 

 smoke, where the wrapper is not punctured by insects, but if it is exposed to 

 the moist air, through the smallest opening, it quickly deliquesces. 



In Karo-land the sugar is cast into flat cakes, three or four inches in 

 diameter and a half-inch thick, of which a considerable number are done up 

 in a large banana-leaf wrapper. This is true also in Toba and Angkola : in 

 the latter district the individual cake is called sagindar, and the package 

 bockkoesan. At the Bandjar sugar camp in Tanah Djawa, mentioned above, 

 flat cakes were also made. The moulds were bamboo rings, cross sections of 

 a large internode, about three-quarters of an inch high. They wei'e placed 

 upon a flat plank, which formed the bottom of the mould. Before the syrup 

 was poured, both plank and rings were wet with water. 



In spite of the importance of Arenga sugar to the natives, there has been 

 no systematic attempt thus far to utilize the tree in European colonial agri- 

 culture. Junghuhn's "Java" (the author lived in Java for many years about 

 the middle of the last century) is quoted by Tschirch (•) to the effect that in 

 six mountainous districts of the residency Bandong, at an altitude of from 

 2,500 to 3,500 feet, there were 1,585 persons occupied in making palm sugar, 

 with 159 cooking places and 335 iron pans. Of the trees, 3,200 were not 

 tapped ; 12,900 were beginning to yield, and 4,700 were in full tapping. The 

 production was about 1,970 pikols. (A pikol is about 133 pounds.) The 

 meticulous exactitude of the statistics regarding a native industry was most 

 astonishing to me until I ran across a remark of Veth (") showing that the 

 thrifty administration of those days enforced the delivery to the government 

 of all the palm sugar produced, at a rate of florins 1.50 to 1.90 per pikol. But 

 notwithstanding the importance of Arenga to the natives, it has been neg- 

 lected as a possible source of sugar for commerce. It is true that at the 

 Marseilles Exposition of 1906 an effort was made to interest the trade in the 

 Arenga sugar of French Indo-China, but with no success. (") 



In the Philippines, Barrett has taken much interest in the possibilities 

 of palm-sugar. In one paper (') he states that one hectare (2.47 acres) 

 planted with 150 to 200 trees, should produce 20 tons of sugar per year for a 



