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JOURNAL, K.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. II., PART II. 



suppose this is done to bruise the young flowers and nuts, 

 and prevent their forming and exhausting the sap, which 

 has to flow through the main and side stalks for our 

 purposes perhaps somewhat different from what nature 

 intended. Still it is quite as allowable to take the produce 

 of the tree in this form as to let it mature its nuts with all 

 their complicated structure of coir, shell, and oily kernel, — 

 which one would suppose would task the tree quite as much 

 as parting so readily with its sap can do, — which may in one 

 sense be said to save the tree a great deal of trouble. By 

 pursuing the above-mentioned treatment regularly, in from 

 twelve to fifteen days, or less, the sap begins to exude from 

 the sliced surface. At first, and for two or three days, it is 

 too small in quantity to be worth collecting, and it is 

 eagerly consumed by bees, wasps, and ants. In fact, I 

 observed mine oozing out sufficiently to attract the insects 

 on the seventh day, but the natives generally allow till the 

 twelfth or fifteenth day before tying on the mutti, by 

 which they may lose some, which perhaps we could not 

 afford to do on a large scale. I observed the pdlaikal began 

 to drip pretty freely on the ninth day, on the evening of 

 which the mutti were tied on, and on the following 

 morning they were taken down, and after being strained 

 the liquor measured a pint and three quarters from the two 

 trees, two pdlaikal on each tree being cut. After this the 

 mutti were taken down and fresh ones tied on twice a day, 

 no more tapping or beating being required, only regularly 

 taking off a thin slice twice a day, to form a fresh surface 

 for the sap to exude from, otherwise it would soon become 

 clogged up and would not run at all ; and this is continued 

 till the pdlai is sliced away to a mere stump ; and this 

 obviously depends on the length and size of the pdlai — if 

 a short one, as on a very young tree, it may be exhausted in 

 from twenty to thirty days, but if a good sized pdlai on an 



