THE PALMS OF BRITISH INDIA AND CEYLON. 937 



Ferguson gives an excellent description of the whole process from 

 personal observations made in Ceylon. 



When the proper season arrives, which is in November and 

 December, the too frequently degraded and drunken toddy- 

 drawers are seen and heard busy at work in the Palmyra groves 

 throughout the Peninsula of Jaffna. Their practised eyes 

 soon fix on those trees that are fit for the ' scalping knife ', 

 and if they have not dropped the footstalks of the leaves, the first 

 operation, if the trees are valuable, is to wrench these off. This 

 done the toddy-drawer, armed with his leathern protector for his 

 breast, his raceme-batten of wood, his small thongs, straight and 

 (^rooked knives, with the ' side leather pouch " to contain them, 

 procures a piece of tough jungle vine, or a strip of the footstalk of 

 a fresh leaf of a young Palmyra or Cocoanut tree, which he 

 thoroughly twists, and then converts it into a sort of loop of such 

 dimensions as to admit of his feet getting through to a span large 

 enough to allow them clasp the tree. This done he piits his feet 

 in this thong, stands close to the tree, stretches himself at full 

 length, clasps it with his hands, and pulls his feet up as close to 

 his arms as possible ; again he slides up his hands, and the same 

 process is repeated, until, by a species of screw process, he ascends 

 to the summit of the tree. When the trees are high, some use 

 hoops of the same material, large enough to encircle both the tree 

 and the toddy-drawer who slides it up the tree, so that it is always 

 a support to the body while the climber is in the act of taking a 

 fresh grasp. 



Arrived at the summit, amongst the leaves, the climbing appar- 

 atus is laid across a leafstalk, and the pruning and phlebotomy 

 commence. One or two of the lower leaves are left as a support to 

 the toddy-drawer until the operation is completed. He then draws 

 his crooked knife, which, on a small scale, a good deal resembles 

 a reaping hook, and rids the tree of all the accumulated dirt, such 

 as old leaves, the net work which supports them, and, if an old 

 tree that bore fruit before, the stumps of the fruitstalks. Then all 

 the leaves are cut off, excepting 3 or 4, and the young top bud of 

 the tree. Besides the removal of all these, the crooked knife is 

 now used in shearing off the outer covering of that part of the tree 

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