THE ARECA PALM. 137 



extending over part of Polynesia and Australia, we find a 

 custom almost as filthy as tobacco-smoking, and causing an 

 almost equal waste of time and money. As many a country- 

 man of ours is hardly ever seen without a cigar in his mouth, 

 thus you will rarely meet with a Malay — man or woman, 

 old or young— that does not indulge from morning till night 

 in the luxury of chewing the astringent nut of the areca palm, 

 mixed with lime and the leaf of the betel-pepper. This com- 

 bination has the disgusting property of colouring the saliva of 

 so deep a red, that the lips and teeth appear as if covered 

 ■with blood ; it spoils the teeth, and sometimes even produces 

 a peculiar kind of cancer in the cheek ; but, as excuses are 

 never wanting to justify bad habits, it is said to have tonic 

 effects and to promote digestion. 



The Areca palm (Ai^eca Catechu) bears a great resem- 

 blance to the cocoa-nut tree, but is of a still more graceful 

 form, rising to the height of forty or fifty feet, without any 

 inequality on its thin polished stem, which is dark-green 

 towards the top, and sustains a crown of feathery foliage, in the 

 midst of which are clustered the astringent nuts, for whose 

 sake it is carefully tended. In the gardens of Ceylon the 

 areca palm is invariably planted near the wells and water- 

 courses, and the betel plant, which immemorial custom has 

 associated to its use, is frequently seen twining round its 

 trunk. 



The Palmyra palm {Bo7'assus fiabellifo'iinis), the sacred Tal- 

 gaha of the Brahminical Tamils of Ceylon, extends from the 

 confines of Arabia to the Moluccas, and is found in every 

 region of Hindostan from the Indus to Siam, the cocoa and 

 the date tree being probably the only palms that enjoy a still 

 wider geographical range. In northern Ceylon, and particularly 

 in the peninsula of Jaffna, it forms extensive forests ; and such 

 is its importance in the Southern Dekkan and along the 

 Coromandel coast, that its fruits afford a compensating resource 

 to seven millions of Hindoos on every occasion of famine or 

 failure of the rice crop. Unlike the cocoa-nut palm, which 

 gracefully bends under its ponderous crown, the palmyra rises 

 vertically to its full height of seventy or eighty feet, and 

 presents a truly majestic sight when laden with its huge 

 clusters of fruits, each the size of an ostrich's egg, and of a rich 



