387 



Edible Products, 



The yield of dry sago from an average sized stem of about four feet 

 in length and two in circumference amounts to about five pounds. The quantity 

 of farinaceous material obtainable from the seeds of a plant of the same dimensions 

 averages annually to about that amount. When it is remembered that the sago 

 obtainable from the seeds of the cycad is, for all practical purposes the same 

 in quality, too, as that from the stem of the plant, it will be admitted that 

 there is no good reason beyond custom, perhaps, to support the practice fof 

 felling it for the elimination of the product. It is evidently a practice which 

 the voracity of some barbarous tribe inaugurated ages ago and which their 

 comparatively enlightened descendants on the hills and plains still keep up. It 

 is, however, a ruinous method of exploitation to be employed with a food-crop 

 which is slow of growth and, although the more intelligent natives of India, 

 living on the outskirts of the forests, seem to entertain the notion that the cycads 

 occur in numbers that are practically inextermiuable in their own or any other 

 generation, the hope for the future development of the industry of extraction 

 of cycad sago lies in the direction of the conservation of the species and its 

 systematic exploitation for fruit alone.— Capital. 



[This plant is commonly employed in the same way in Ceylon.— En.] 



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