THE PALMYRA PALM. 



263 



The Palmyra Palm* {Borassus flahelliformts, Lin.) is one of those 

 enjoying the widest geographical distribution. A glance at one of 

 the maps in Berghaus's or Johnston's Physical Atlas, showing the 

 range of the most remarkable plants, will help to illustrate this fact. 



In the Madras Presidency there are 10,000 acres under culture with 

 this palm. 



The number of uses for which the palmyra is employed may be 

 said to be almost infinite ; indeed one of the Eastern languages, the 

 Tamil, spoken in a portion of the region which the tree acknowledges 

 as its native country, possesses a poem entitled ' Tala Vilasam, ' 

 enumerating no fewer than eight hundred different purposes to which 

 the palmyra may be applied, and this poem by no means exhausts the 

 catalogue. 



The spadix bearing the fruits is generally simple, and covered with 

 a single sheath or spathe, as in the areca, catechu, and cocoanut 

 palms, but it is sometimes compound, and bearing two bunches of 

 fruit in a compound spathe. The fruits are, with beautiful regularity, 

 arranged round the spadix in three rows, and whichever way ex- 

 amined are found in nearly opposite pairs. Each spadix bears from 

 ten to twenty fruits, and one of these spadices, with the fruits ripe, 

 would be nearly as much as a man could carry. Each palm bears 

 seven or eight of these spadices, so that a tree often bears about one 

 hundred and fifty 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 swells so as to 

 give the fruit the appearance of a perfect globe. 



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

 mass of soft yellow pulp, intermixed with dark, stravz-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. 



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 4 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 punkahs. These 

 are lacquered for sale, or used plain, as may suit the taste of the pur- 

 chaser, but one never sees a Buddhist 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 performs the writing, the leaf is moved in a contrary direction, 

 by means of the thumb. 



All their olas or books, treating of religion and the healing 



* By W. Ferguson. 



