No. 5. — 1850,] SUGAK MANUFACTURE. 



235 



man,* whereas here, twenty to twenty-five trees are con- 

 sidered about the mark. At Galle especially, where a great 

 many trees are rented for arrack in the same plantation, 

 this is easily managed, but at Batticaloa very few trees 

 comparatively speaking are devoted to toddy, there being 

 such a steady demand for the nuts, and no arrack distilled 

 here, that people prefer to let their trees bear. The 

 JValavan is provided with a cylindrical-shaped mallet, called 

 tadda-pudde, made of a hard dark wood called ndka, neatly 

 turned, and a sharp, broad bladed crooked knife called 

 pdlaik-katti. Arrived at the top of the tree he seats him- 

 self quite leisurely on one of the broad branches, resting the 

 mutti, before tying it on to the pdlai, in the hollow of 

 another, which seems just adapted to the purpose. At first 

 he merely beats the pdlai well, once a day, in the morning, 

 and after the first time, and again after each beating, he 

 binds the pdlai firmly round with fillets of cocoanut and 

 palmyra leaves, to prevent its bursting into flowers. On 

 the third morning he slices off the horny tip of the spatka, 

 or sheath of the flower-stalk, exposing to view the young 

 flowers and perhaps one or two young nuts, which it is 

 hardly necessary to observe are formed by a kind of 

 cryptogamous generation in the mysterious recesses of the 

 pdlai. The flowers therefore which are seen on the 

 numerous small side stalks which branch out of the main 

 flower-stem are, I believe, the male flowers, which have to 

 fecundate the embryo nuts. However this may be, all this 

 process is interrupted by the first cut of the trenchant 

 blade. The same evening the man slices a little more, and 

 after that regularly twice a day, but he does not always 

 beat it, only every three days, once in the morning. I 



* I am told a man will actually take the toddy from two hundred trees, 

 but probably with assistance. 



