THE SAGO PALM. 



269 



The native country of the sago palm appears to be that portion of 

 the Archipelago in which the easterly monsoon is boisterous and 

 rainy. It is most abundant in the islands distinguished for the pro- 

 duction of the clove and nutmeg, and is to be found in its wild state 

 in immense forests. Of all the plants which afford a supply of 

 nutritious farina for human food the sago is at once the most obviously 

 easy, and abundant. The mass of nutritive matter which a single 

 tree yields is certainly prodigious. Five and six hundred pounds 

 weight, it appears, is not an unusual produce for one tree. 



Allowing for destroyed, barren, and unproductive trees, the average 

 rate of produce may be assumed at 300 lbs. avoirdupois. 



Forrest states the average produce of a Molucca tree to be 336 lbs., 

 but Rumphius makes it from 600 lbs. to 800 lbs. ; and according to a 

 writer in a Singapore paper, good Sumatra trees yield from 760 lbs. to 

 950 lbs., and the very worst 475 lbs. Perhaps, therefore, 700 lbs. 

 may be assumed as an average for the Sumatra trees, which at 10 feet 

 apart (the distance stated by Forrest and followed by Crawfurd) would 

 give 300,000 lbs. for the harvest from one acre ; and allowing that 

 the harvests are fifteen years apart, and not seven as Forrest as- 

 sumes, this will give an annual average produce of 20,000 lbs. I 

 believe, however, that five or six feet is about the average distance of 

 the large stems in the Sumatra forests. When a plantation has once 

 arrived at maturity there will be a constant harvest, because the 

 natural mode of growth secures a constant succession of new plants 

 from the time those first planted have begun to extend their roots, and 

 the succession can be regulated by the knife in any way the planter 

 desires. 



There is no regular fixed season for extracting the pith, which is 

 taken as occasion requires and as the individual tree becomes ripe. 

 The period of maturity depends on the nature of the soil on which the 

 palm grows. Fifteen years may be reckoned an average time for the 

 tree to come to maturity. It is not, however, by a calculation of 

 the tree's age, but by its appearance, or by an actual experiment 

 on the pith, that the period of maturity is determined. The inhabi- 

 tants of the Moluccas mark six stages in the progress of the ripening 

 process of the medullary substance, the first of which is known by 

 the appearance of a mealy efflorescence on the branches, and the last 

 by the commencement of fructification. The pith may be extracted 

 at any of these stages ; and sometimes the natives, trusting to their 

 experience, proceed to the harvest from the mere appearance which the 

 tree presents. More frequently, however, a hole is bored in the trunk 

 and a small quantity of the pith extracted for the purpose of ascertain- 

 ing the degree of its maturity. When the pith is ascertained to be 

 ripe, the tree is cut down near the root and the trunk subdivided into 

 portions of six or seven feet long, each of which is split into two parts ; 

 from these last pieces the medullary substance is extracted and at 

 once reduced to a powder-like sawdust with an instrument of bamboo 

 or hard wood. The process of separating the farina from the accom- 

 panying bran and filaments is simple and obvious, and consists merely 

 in mixing the powdered pith with water and passing the water charged 

 with the farina through a sieve at one end of the trough in which the 



