178 Dr Cleghorn on the Coco- Nut Tree and its Uses. 
seventh or eighth year. Plants of vigorous growth send forth 
nine, ten, and even twelve clusters of buds in the year; but 
those on which little care has been bestowed, and which are 
consequently feeble, produce only four or five of these spathes.” 
Having made these remarks upon the coco-nut tree, and 
upon the many uses to which it is applied, I shall now give 
some account of the extraction of toddy from the trees, and of 
the means and appliances used in the process. When a tree 
has thrown out aspathe (called in Tamil p@ai) from which it 
is intended to extract toddy, about a month is usually allowed - 
to elapse for the flower-buds inside the spathe to become 
sufficiently juicy to yield a fair return to the toddy-drawer. 
The spathe, at that time elliptical in form and pointed, will 
have attained a length of two feet, and a diameter of about 
two inches in the thickest part. The sheath of the spathe will 
be about an eighth of an inch thick, and very hard. At this 
stage the nut is a small, round-looking knob, of the same 
colour as the flowers—pale yellow, and of about the size of a 
marble. A few of the spathes are barren of nuts; some of 
them contain two or three, some five or six, and others as 
many as ten or twenty. When a month or five weeks have 
elapsed, and the spathe is considered in a fit state to com- 
mence operations upon, it is tightly bound round with strips 
of young leaves, to prevent the expansion of the sheath, and 
is cut transversely at the point, bruised, and otherwise care- 
fully treated from day to day. ‘To do this is the business of 
the Sanar or toddy-drawer. In Plate I. a representation is 
given of a Sanar, accoutred with the toddy-basket, back-rope, 
and regular paraphernalia peculiar to his employment. 
First in importance among his appointments is theArival- 
pétty (lit. knife-box) made from the sheath of the spathe, and 
bound round tight with two binders of ratan (Plate II. fig. 3). 
Inside is a thin wooden collar of palmyra bark, circling round 
and made fast with fibrous cording. A wooden partition 
divides the pétty longitudinally into two divisions, in one of 
which he carries his knife, in the other his mallet, sandbox, 
and fibre. An iron hook is fixed to the arivalpétty, in order 
to take a chatty up a tree or bring one down, a string being 
tied to the mouth of the chatty, and fastened to the hook. 
