A CEYLONKSE COCOA-NUT OIL-MILL. 



CHAPTEE XITI. 



PALMS AND FERNS. 



The Cocoa-nut Tree— Its hundred Uses — Cocoa-nut Oil— ^Coir — Porcupine Wood- 

 Enemies of the Cocoa Palm — The Sago Palm — The Saguer — The Gumatty — - 

 The Areca Palm— The Palmyra Palm— The Talipot— The Cocoa de Mer- 

 Katans— A Eatan bridge in Ceylon— The Date Tree— The Oil Palms of Africa— 

 The Oil Trade at Bonny — Its vast and growing Importance — American Palms — 

 The Carnauba — The Ceroxylon andicola — The Cabbage Palm — The Gulielma 

 speciosa — The Piacava — Difficulties of the Botanist in ascertaining the 

 various species of Palms — Their wide geographical range — Diiferent Phy- 

 siognomy of the Palms according to their height — The Position and Form of 

 their Fronds — Their Fruits — Their Trunk — The Yriartea ventricosa — Arbores- 

 cent Ferns. 



THE graceful acanthus gave the imaginative Greeks the first 

 idea of the Corinthian capital ; but the shady canopy of 

 the cocoa-nut tree would no doubt form a still more beautiful 

 ornament of architecture, were it possible for art to imitate its 

 feathery fronds and carve their delicate tracery in stone. 



Essentially littoral, this noble palm requires an atiaosphere 

 damp with the spray and moisture of the sea to acquire its full 

 stateliness of growth, and while along the bleak shores of the 

 Northern Ocean the trees are generally bent landward by the 

 rough sea breeze, and send forth no branches to face its violence, 

 the cocoa, on the contrary, loves to bend over the rolling surf, 

 und to drop its fruits into the tidal wave. Wafted by the winds 



