THE COCOA-NUT PALM 



531 



times arrive in Ceylon, built, rigged, provisioned and 

 laden with the produce of the cocoa-nut palms. A ship- 

 wrecked crew was cast upon the South Sea Islands where 

 the party remained for several months living solely on 

 cocoa-nuts and a little broiled fish ; when they returned 

 they had all increased in weight. 



The by-product is oil-cake which is of great value. The 

 trunks of the trees are used for innumerable purposes 

 besides house building and furniture, and the wood in 

 Europe is called porcupine wood because of the vascular 

 growth resembling the quills of that animal. Mature 

 cocoa-nuts fall from the trees ; but planters cannot always 



THE LEAF, BUD, BLOSSOM AND FRUIT OF THE COCOANUT PALM 



wait for them to fall, and there is no pole or ladder to 

 reach one hundred feet ; climbing is the only way, and 

 cocoa-nut tree climbing is a trade in cocoa-nut countries. 

 Professional tree-climbers have the speed and agility of 

 monkeys. To facilitate the operation they place a strong 

 bop of coir rope around the feet near the ankles; this 

 enables them to grip the tree securely and ascend the 

 highest trees with amazing alacrity. The climbers are 

 also tree tappers, that is, tapping the cocoa-nut bud for 

 the sap from which arrack is made. 



Cocoa-nuts being the native wealth, cocoa-nut thieves 

 are not uncommon. The owners of plantations have a 

 unique system of thief alarm : dry fronds are bound to 

 the tree from the ground upwards for about twenty feet ; 

 and it is impossible for the thief to remove or climb over 

 these without making a great noise which arouses the 

 watchman who is never far away. There are many 

 other kinds of palm trees in Ceylon of great economic 



value ; next to the cocoa-nut palm comes the palmyra, the 

 value of whose exports alone reach half a million dollars, 

 while those of the cocoa nut exceed five million dollars, 

 and the export value is but a fraction of the value in the 

 domestic uses. I am referring now to the small island of 

 Ceylon. Marvelous as are the many varied uses of ' 

 this tree I have yet to dispute its claim to the first place 

 in economics, and that when I consider the bamboo. 

 James Ricalton. 



HEART ROT IN WESTERN HEMLOCK 



'T'HE United States Department of Agriculture is in- 

 A terested in the conservation of the timber supplies 

 of the country and is urging preventive measures against 

 decay which is prevalent to an alarming extent in the 

 hemlock forests of the west. 



"It has been generally supposed," says a bulletin 

 issued recently by the Department, "that lumber from 

 western hemlock is likely to decay rapidly after it has 

 been sawed. Such early decay is usually due to heart 

 rot present in the growing tree before it is cut ; its effects 

 are particularly noticed as the lumber dries out, even 

 though there is no progress in the decay itself. 



"This heart rot is known to sawmill men as stringy 

 brown rot, and to the woodsmen generally as Indian 

 Paint fungus, mainly because the Indians of the North- 

 west used to use the powdered orange red fungus for war 

 paint, and also made dyes of it." 



A NOVEL SEAT 



A LONG WHILE AGO A HUGE MILLSTONE THAT HAD BEEN 

 USED IN A NEW YORK VILLAGE WAS DISCARDED. IT LAY ON 

 THE GROUND FOR MANY YEARS UNTIL ONE DAY A TENDER 

 TREE POKED ITS HEAD THROUGH THE HOLE IN THE CENTER 

 OF THE STONE. THE TREE CONTINUED TO GROW AND SOON 

 FILLED THE HOLE SO TIGHTLY THAT THE MILLSTONE WAS 

 HELD UP BY THE TREE. THIS EFFECT WAS NOT PRODUCED, 

 AS SOME HAVE THOUGHT, BY THE TREE LIFTING THE STONE 

 TO THIS HEIGHT, A THING WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE WHILE A 

 TREE GROWS. THE STONE HAD BEEN HELD UP HIGH ENOUGH 

 TO SIT ON COMFORTABLY BY OTHER MEANS, AND WHEN THE 

 TREE ONCE HELD IT UP, THE SUPPORTS WERE REMOVED. 



