136 PALMS. 



two to four hundredweight of flour, which is mostly consumed 

 on the spot, and serves to feed several millions of men ; but a 

 great quantity is also exported to Europe. Thus, in Singapore, 

 there are upwards of thirty refineries, which convert the sago 

 imported in an impure state from Borneo into a beautiful 

 white flour, which is extensively used by English manufacturers 

 for stiff*ening calicoes. 



The sago palm forms large forests, particularly on swampy 

 ground in Borneo and Sumatra, in the Moluccas and New 

 Guinea. Mushrooms of an excellent flavour frequently cover 

 the mouldering trunks, and in the pith, the fat and whitish 

 grubs of the Cossus saguarius, a large lamellicorn beetle, are 

 found, which the natives consider a great delicacy when roasted. 



The Saguer or Gromuti {Gomutus vulgaris), the ugliest of 

 palms, but almost rivalling the cocoa-nut tree by the multipli- 

 city of its uses, is likewise a native of the Indian Archipelago. 

 On seeing its rough and swarthy rind, and the dull dark- 

 green colour of its fronds, the stranger wonders how it is 

 allowed to stand, but when he has tasted its delicious wine he 

 is astonished not to see it cultivated in greater numbers. 

 Although the outer covering of the fruits has venomous 

 qualities, and is used by the Malays to poison springs, the 

 nuts have a delicate flavour, and the wounded spathe yields 

 an excellent toddy, which, like that of the cocoa-nut and the 

 palmyra palm, changes by fermentation into an intoxicating 

 wine, and on being thickened by boiling furnishes a kind 

 of black sugar, much used by the natives of Java and the 

 adjacent isles. The reticulum or fibrous net at the base of 

 the petioles of the leaves constitutes the gumatty, a substance 

 admirably adapted to the manufacture of cables, and exten- 

 sively used for cordage of every description. The gumatty 

 is black as jet, the hairs extremely strong, and resembling 

 coir, except that they are longer and finer. The small hard 

 twigs found mixed up with this material are employed as 

 pens, besides forming the shafts of the sumpits, or little 

 poisoned arrows of the Malays, and underneath the reti- 

 culum is a soft silky material, used as tinder by the Chinese, 

 and applied as oakum in caulking the seams of ships, while 

 from the interior of the trunk a kind of sago is prepared. 



Throughout the whole of the Indian Archipelago, and 



