USES AND. NATIVE NAMES. 95: 
the stem the top of the plant is cut off and then, handling it from the upper end, 
the stem is forcibly drawn in the opposite direction between two pieces of wood. 
In this way the stem is easily stripped of its spiny coverings and is then cut into 
lengths of about 5 metres each. These pieces are bent into two equal parts and 
fastened into bundles; in (this state the canes are brought to the market. The Hotang 
which are thus prepured, and are most valued by traders, are not thicker than a 
man’s little finger and have a fine polished straw-yellow glassy surface. | 
Some of the finest and most slender canes are preserved entire and are put on 
the. market rolled up like coils of thick iron wire. 
I have no reliable data as to the quantity of Rattan canes imported to Europe 
from Eastern ports. It is not even known what quantity is produced in each 
country. It is however certain that Borneo must supply a very large proportion of 
those that are put on the market, as we find from the Report of the Trade of 
Sarawak that from that town alone 27,784 piculs of Rattan were exported during 
the year 1899, and 31,200 during 1900, while some years before the supply had 
been still greater. 
With the exception of the Malacca cane it is not exactly known from what 
species the ratíaus of commerce are obtained. 
The indigenous names which I have always recorded when they were known 
to me may assist to a] certain extent in the identification of the economic and 
commercial species, but it is a very well-known fact that native names are seldom 
to be relied on in a rigorously scientific sense. 
Nor must we believe that all the species of Calamus produce a serviceable cane; in 
not a few of them the stem, though very long and flexible, is soft and brittle and 
therefore useless, Among Indian species to which this remark applies are (€. leptos- 
padis and C. Flagellum. On the other hand, the canes of C. tenuis, C. Rotang, 
C. fascicularis and ©. palustris, and in lower India also those of C. pseudotenuis, are 
of very good quality and much appreciated, In the Nicobar Islands there is a great 
demand on the part of traders for the rattan of C. nicobaricus; C. longisetus is much 
used by the Andamanese. In Java the most useful canes are those of C. javensis, 
€. viminalis, C. melunoloma, C. heterotdeus and C. Reinwardtii, especially the two last. 
which, however, are less esteemed than those imported from Sumatra and Borneo. 
In the Philippines the rattan of C. mollis seems to be one of the most commonly 
used, 
In the Malayan Peninsula there are certainly many species of Calamus that 
produce valuable canes; but, though the species of that region are comparatively well 
known scientifically, we are almost entirely ignorant to which of them the commercial 
canes that are brought by the natives fom the forests and sold to traders correspond. 
A Calamus which is termed ¿there **Retang Segu,” and which 1 have identified with 
Blume's €. caesius, corresponds to the ^ Rotang Segah” of Borneo, also termed in 
Sarawak “Rotang Buluch," which is C. optimus Becc., a very near ally of C. caesius, - 
In Sarawak this is undoubtedly the most esteemed Rotang among all the species 
known to the Malays; being one of those that are easily reduced to long strips it 
is much used for finer work on account of its very neat straw-yellow polished 
Axw, Roy. Bor. Garp. Carcurra Vor. XI. 
