282 THE ECONOMIC PRODUCTS OF THE PALMYRA PALM. 



these spadices, so that a tree often bears about 150 fruits in one season ; 

 each fruit is about the size of a young child s head. The fruits, when 

 young, are pretty distinctly three cornered, but when old, the pulp round 

 the nuts so swells as to give the fruit the appearance of a perfect globe. 



The ripe fruits or drupes contain two or three nuts embedded in a 

 ma->s of soft yellow pulp, intermixed with dark straw-coloured fibre or 

 coir. These nuts are oblong, and a good deal flattened, and covered with 

 a mass of short fibre which adheres to them. Besides this fibre they are 

 covered with a thick shell, so difficult of fracture that the Tamils say 

 an elephant cannot break them. 



Leaves or Fronds. — The fronds are fan-leaved, armed with spines 

 radiating from a common centre, and the stipes serrated at their edges. 

 The fan part is about four feet in diameter. It answers as a kind of 

 umbrella when held by the stem over one's head. The spines are cut 

 off and the middle is formed into large fans called vissaries and pun- 

 kahs. These are lacquered for sale, or used plain as may sivit the taste 

 of the purchaser, but one never sees a Budhist priest without one of 

 the smaller sort, or a fan of some kind or other ; of which some are 

 heart-shaped, others circular with handles of carved ivory. 



The leaves of this tree as well as those of the talapat tree are used 

 instead of paper by the natives. They write letters upon them, which 

 neatly rolled up, and sometimes sealed with a little gum lac, pass 

 through the post office. During the operation of writing, the leaf is 

 supported by the left hand, and the letters scratched upon the surface 

 with the stylus. Instead of moving towards the right hand which per- 

 forms the writing, the leaf is moved in a contrary direction by means 

 of the thumb. 



All their olas or books treating of religions and the healing art, &c, 

 are transcribed on them, but in a language elevated above the common 

 idiom. The leaves of both these palm trees lie in folds like a fan, and 

 the slips stand in need of no other preparation than merely to be sepa- 

 rated and cut smooth and even with a knife, after having been slowly 

 dried in the shade and rubbed with oil. Their mode of writing upon 

 them consists in carving the letters with a fine pointed style, and in 

 order that the characters may be the better seen and read, they rub 

 them over with an ink made of lamp black, or some other substance, 

 and a solution of gum, so that the letters have altogether the appear- 

 ance of being engraved. 



The iron point made use of on these occasions, is either set in a 

 brass handle, which the Moormen and others carry about them in a 

 wooden case, and which is sometimes six inches in length, or else it is 

 formed entirely of iron, and together with the blade of a knife designed 

 for the purpose of cutting the leaves and making them even, set in a 

 knife handle common to them both, into which handle it shuts up, so 

 that it may be carried by the owner about with him, and be always 

 ready at hand. 



