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LVI. Memoir ok the Natural Hisinrj/ of the CocO'nrd Tire 

 and the Areca-nut Tree ; the Cultivation of them accord- 

 ing to the Methods of the Hindoos ; their Productionsy 

 and their Utility in the Arts and for the Purposes of do~ 

 vieslic Economtj. Bjj M. Le Goux de Flaix, un Officer 

 of Engineers, and Member of the Asiatic Society at Cal- 

 cutta *. 



JL HESE interesting vegetables are indigenous in the East 

 Indies : they are found also in stune parts of Africa, and 

 even of America \ but I do not think that they were placed 

 there by nature. 



Trav-ellers liave given descriptions of these vegetables, 

 which are the delight of the natives, and serve to urnament 

 thsir habitations ; but tliev appear to me to be in many re- 

 spects incorrect. I shall therefore describe them as I ob- 

 served them during a long scries of years, and in different 

 countries of Illndostan. I shall begin with the coco-nut 

 tree as being the most useful, and shall then speak of that 

 which bears the areca-nut. 



It is well known that the coco-nut tree {Cocos nucifera 

 Linn.) is of the genus of the unllobe plants, of the monoe- 

 cia hexandria, and the family of the palms, to which bo- 

 tany has given this appellation because instead of boughs 

 and branches they bear palms. The coco-nut tree exhibits 

 also as characters a ilower-bud or sheath, which is mono- 

 phvllous, and a branchy palm winged and exceedingly long. 

 Its bud is furnished with a very great number of branches 

 attached to a pedicle exceedingly short. It presents also a 

 very great number of flowers about two or three lines lu 

 length, oblong, with a corolla of six equal petals horned, 

 convex, rounded at their extremity, of a pale ficsh colour, 

 and having little odour. These flowers, the n)ales of which 

 are placed above, have six stamina with saglttated anthcrse, 

 and a pistil wlilch miscarries : the female, which are more 

 numerous, placed near the former and along the same stalk 

 at Intervals of five or eight, have a round ovarium destitute 

 of a style, and over Ic a thrce-lobcd stigma. 



Some of the. flowers before the spathu opens are succeeded 

 by a drupa, at first exceedinglv tender, round, and whitish, 

 which becomes very large, smooth, coriaceous, and fibrous: 

 it contains a nut more or less oval, monospermous, exceed- 

 ingly hard, of a browu colour, somctliues veined, of one 



^ From the Bililiotbtnu; Phpico-Eccnoniique, Is'os 5, 0, ?, &iz. 1804.. 



piece, 



