OF THE COCO-NUT TREE. 
109 
action of the air and sun. A slight wound in the central 
bud is fatal to the tree ; but the hardened trunk is capable 
of bearing considerable injury with impunity. 
Coco-nut trees are often struck by lightning, which fre- 
quently kills the terminal leal-bud, and thereby occasions 
the death of the tree. This tree never changes the diame- 
ter it has once acquired. Should any circumstance occur 
capable of retarding the growth during one or more years, 
such as transplantation, the eJffect is very evident in the stem 
by a permanent contraction in its diameter. Immediate- 
ly above these strangulated parts small roots sometimes 
protrude, but they seldom extend beyond a few inches. 
Frequently the trunk has a larger diameter at the base and 
top than in the middle. 
The wood of the stem is composed of hard, flexible, lig- 
neous, black fibres, united by a soft brownish pith, or cellu- 
lar substance, capable of being reduced to powder. " The 
palms have in the interior structure of their trunks no ana- 
logy with other trees. In habit and in structure they re- 
semble the ferns, in their blossom the grasses, and the aspa- 
ragi in their mode of fructification All the palms have 
in a greater or less degree a spongy structure. The cellular 
substance of the Cycas circinalis (Sago-palm) is, in some of 
the islands of the eastern Archipelago, manufactured into 
the nutritive substance called Sago. The Caryota urens 
(Nepery tree) yields a considerable quantity of fecula, or 
sago ; but in Ceylon this substance is not extracted, except 
during a period when rice is scarce. Sago is easily ob- 
tained from the interior part of the trunk of these trees. 
The process consists in pounding the spongy or cellu- 
lar texture of the stem, and washing it with water, which 
is strained, to separate the ligneous fibres from the feculent 
* Malte Brvn. 
