727 



country ; it yields the flour of which the yuru- 

 ma bread is made, and, far from being a palm- 

 tree of the shore, like the chamaerops humilis, 

 the common cocoa- tree, and the lodoicea of 

 Commerson, is found as a palm-tree of the 

 marshes as far as the sources of the Oroonoko*. 



teria Medica of Hindostan, Madras, 1813, p. 39,) The 

 quantity of nutritious matter, which the real sago-tree of 

 Asia affords (sagus Rumphii, or metroxylon sagu, Roxburgh), 

 exceeds that which is furnished by any other plant useful to 

 man. One trunk of a tree in it's fifteenth year sometimes 

 yields six hundred pounds weight of sago, or meal (for the 

 word sago signifies meal in the dialect of Amboina). Mr. 

 Crawford, who resided a long time in the Indian Archipela- 

 go,, calculates, that an English acre (four thousand and 

 twenty square metres) could contain four hundred and thirty- 

 five sago-trees, which would yield one hundred and twenty 

 thousand, five hundred pounds avoirdupois of fecula, or 

 more than eight thousand pounds yearly. (History of the 

 Indian Archipelago, vol. i, p. 387 and 393.) This produce is 

 triple that of corn, and double that of potatoes in France. 

 But the plantain produces on the same surface of land still 

 more alimentary substance than the sago-tree. (See my 

 Political Essay on New Spain, vol. i, p. 363.) 



* See above, p. 503. I dwell much on these divisions of 

 the great and fine families of palms according to the distri- 

 bution of the species: 1st, in dry places, or inland plains 

 (corypha tectorum);1 2d, on the sea coast (chamaerops 

 humilis, cocos nucifera, corypha maritima, lodoieea sechel- 

 larum, Labill.) ; 3d, in the fresh water marshes (sagus rump- 

 hii, mauritia flexuosa); and 4th, in the alpine regions 

 between seven and fifteen hundred toises high (ceroxylon 

 andicola, oreodoxa frigida, kunthia montana). This last 



