COCOA-NUT TREE. 317 



transparent, and is seen at the bases of the young- 

 fronds ; but as the frond attains maturity, this 

 natural matting becomes coarser and tough, and 

 changes to a brown colour ;* it may be stripped 

 off the tree in large pieces, which are used in 

 Ceylon as strainers, particularly for the toddy, 

 which is usually full of impurities when recently 

 taken from the tree, as its sweetness attracts in- 

 sects innumerable. In most countries which I 

 have visited, where this valuable tree is pro- 

 duced, this portion of it is used for a similar pur- 

 pose. At the island of Tahiti (Otaheite) it is 

 called Aa ; and besides being used as sieves 

 for straining arrow-root, cocoa-nut oil, &c., the 

 natives, when engaged in such occupations as 



* There is a kind of seam along the centre, exactly under 

 the stem of the leaf, from both sides of which long and 

 tough fibres, about the size of a bristle, regularly diverge in 

 an oblique direction ; sometimes there appear to be two 

 layers of fibres, which cross each other, and the whole is 

 cemented with a still finer, fibrous, and adhesive substance. 

 The length and evenness of the threads, or fibres, the regular 

 manner in which they cross each other at oblique angles, 

 the extent of surface, and the thickness of the piece, cor- 

 responding with that of coarse cotton cloth, the singular 

 manner in which the fibres are attached to each other, 

 cause this curious substance, woven in the loom of nature, 

 to present to the eye a remarkable resemblance to cloth 

 spun and woven by human ingenuity. — Ellis, vol. i. p. 53. 



