No. 5. — 1850.] SUGAR MANUFACTURE. 



237 



older tree, it may last as much as forty days, or perhaps a day 

 -or two more or less. Bark toddy (paddai-pdni) is taken 

 from the tree twice a day, the mutti being emptied, 

 washed, and burnt out with a little dry grass or straw and 

 kept for the next time, and clean mutti immediately put 

 on. When lime is used, however, it preserves the sap much 

 longer from fermentation than the bark, for which limed 

 mutti are not taken down till twenty-four hours have 

 elapsed ; but it is requisite for the man to ascend the tree in 

 the evening and take off the mutti for a moment when he 

 slices the pdlaikal to make a fresh surface, and then replace 

 them, only taking them down for boiling the sap into 

 jaggery on the following morning. 



I found that the trees soon began to yield an increased 

 quantity of sap, which was boiled down to sugar or syrup in 

 different methods, as explained by my brother. For thirty 

 days I gave the two trees a fair trial, only ten pdlaikal being 

 cut on each, and the sap increased from 3 J in a day or two 

 to 7, 8, and even 9 pints a day from the two trees, when 

 towards the thirteenth day it fell off to 5 or 6 pints. The 

 average for the thirty days was pints, or T 3 g pint from 

 each tree per day. In the meantime two other pdlaikalh&d 

 been cut on one of the trees and one on the other, which 

 gradually came into yielding, and I gave the two trees 

 another trial : this time for thirty-one days, during which 

 period the yield increased from 5 or 6 pints to 9, 10, and 

 11£ pints a day ; and the average from the two trees for the 

 thirty-one days was 8J pints, or 4-Jg pints per tree per day. 

 Since the end of the thirty-one days — i.e., about the middle 

 and latter end of November, when there was only one paled 

 running on the smaller tree — it has frequently given 3 

 pints, which seems an immense quantity, as, if three or four 

 had been running together at that rate, the tree would have 

 .given from 9 pints to a gallon and a half a day ! At all 



