The Palms of British East India. 353 



" This tree yields Tari, or Palm wine, during the cold seasons. 

 The method of extracting it destroys the appearance and fertility 

 of the tree. The fruit of those that have been cut for drawing off 

 the juice being very small. 



" The mode of extracting this juice is by removing the lower leaves 

 and their sheaths, and cutting a notch into the pith of the tree near 

 the top, from thence it issues and is conducted by a small channel 

 made of a bit of the Palmyra tree leaf into a pot suspended to 

 receive it. On the coast of Coromandel this Palm juice is either 

 drunk fresh from the tree, or boiled down into sugar, or formented 

 for distillation, when it gives out a large portion of ardent spirit 

 commonly called Paria aruk on the coast of Coromandel. Mats 

 and baskets are made of the leaves. 



" The Bengalees call this tree Khujjoor. They also boil the juice 

 into sugar. In the whole Province of Bengal about fifteen thou- 

 sand maunds, or about a hundred thousand hundred-weight, is made 

 annually. At the age of from seven or ten years, when the trunk of 

 the trees will be about four feet high, they begin to yield juice, and 

 continue productive for twenty or twenty-five years. It is extracted 

 during the cold months of November, December, January, and Feb- 

 ruary ; during which period, each tree is reckoned to yield from one 

 hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty pints of juice, which 

 averages one hundred and eighty pints ; every twelve pints or pounds 

 is boiled down to one of Goor or Jaguri, and four of Goor yield one 

 of good powder sugar, so that the average produce of each tree 

 is about seven or eight pounds of sugar annually. 



" Another statement presented to me, gives a much larger produce, 

 viz. the average produce of each tree is sixteen pints per day, four of 

 which will yield two pounds of molasses, and forty of molasses will 

 yield twenty-five pounds of brown sugar. The difference is so great, 

 that I cannot well reconcile them, but am inclined to give most cre- 

 dit to the first. 



" Date sugar, as it is here called, is not so much esteemed as cane 

 sugar, and sells for about one fourth less." Roxb. o. c. I. c. 



69. (5.) P. paludosa, arbuscula, trunco basi annulato, 

 pinnis solitariis bifariis ensiformibus acuminatissimis patenti- 



