452 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[Jan. 2, 1899. 
is due to their not beini^ fertilised by any insect. 
Presumably there exists in Guinea Mouie insect 
by which its flowers are fertilised, for the reason, 
among others, that its flowers, unlike those of 
most other palm trees, have a very pleasant 
smell, and that the natural use of this perfume 
is probably for attracting insects to fertilise the 
flowers; but this perfume does not seem to be 
attractive to any Ceylon insect, for I have 
observed that the' apis (rUjona, the small black 
bee which is the chief agent in the fertilieinp; 
of the di(eciou.s flowers, of the wild date, never 
touches those of the oily palm, nor do the flowers 
of the latter appear to be vinited, except acci. 
dentally, by any other Ceylon'; insect. Hence the 
tree does not bear fruit in this country — or at 
most bears only two or three fruits on a spadix — 
unless there are male and female flowers on the 
same spadix, which is not a frequent occurrence. 
If, therefore, the tree were cultivated as an 
economic product in this country, its flowers 
would, like those of the vanilla, require to be 
artilicially fertilised ; b\it the llowera of the oily 
palm coiild be fertilised in a manner much less 
troublesome and less teilious than is necessary 
for those of the vanilla ; and palm oil might 
eventually become one of the j)rincipal products 
of this i.jland if the cause of tlie frequent failure 
of the tree to bear fruit, though flowering 
plentifully, were generally known. Some think 
that the oily palm could not he profitably cultivated 
here because palm oil in any required quantity 
can be obtained from the trees growint; wild 
in junffles nearer England than the East Indian ; 
but this is also the case with cinchona bark, 
and yet the cultivation of cinchona did pay 
very ' well here until the trade in the bark be- 
came unprofitable to grow by reason of over- 
production ; but an overproduction of palm oil 
is a contingency not much to be dreaded, at 
least for a long time to come, because the annual 
imports of it into the United Kingdom are, ac- 
cording to the " Encyclo)){Edia Britannicji," about 
six times as large as tho.se of coconut oil. For 
domestic purposes, the oily palm is not so useful 
a tree as the coconut ; but, commercially speak- 
ing, 1 think the former is the more valuable tree 
of the two. Palm oil is more easily made than 
coconut oil ; i orcupines, which are often very 
destructive to young coconut palms, do not attack 
the oily palm, except when it is very small, 
being deterred from so doing by the thorns on 
the leaf-stalks of the latter ; the red weevil, 
another formidable enemy of the coconut palm 
seems never to attack the clceis, nor does the 
latter tree seem to be liable to damage by any 
other insect except the rhinoceros beetle — which 
also damages coconut palms — but the rhinoceros 
beetle does not kill the tree, though it injures 
and disfigures it ; and the elais, being itself a 
jungle tree, can, -when once established, hold 
its own without any cultivation. Tt does not 
require a longer time to come into bearing than 
does the coconut ; and its produce would not be 
easily stolen from the tree— not an unimportant 
practical advantage with a village product. The 
worst enemy of the oily palm seems to be the 
bandicoot, which occasionally proves destructive 
to young plants of it in a nursery; but with a 
steel trap and a bait of roasted coconut, bandi- 
coots can be caught as ea.sily as common house 
rats. 
Palm Sugar. — Another Palm tree which ap- 
pears to receive less attention than it merits ia 
the Gomuti or Java Sugar Palm (Aren^a Sac- 
charifera). For suitable situations no better 
palm than the palmyra is likelr to be found ; 
but the palmyra requires a dry, hot clintate and 
a deeply permeable soil, whereas the gomuti 
seems to tiirive well in any situation adapted 
for its relative, thekitul; and the kitul is very 
liable, wlfn young, to destruction by porcui>ines, 
but they do not seem to attack the f;omuti, being 
probably hindered from so doing liy the large 
quantity of black fibre which they wonld have 
to tear away or bite through in order to get et 
the heart of the latter. 1 have not had any 
opportunity of exi)erin)enting on the gomuti, bii* 
1 have made many experiments on the kitnl, 
and it may be presumed that any mode of treat* 
nient which suits the latter, would suit the 
former also. Most Europeans imagine the ex- 
traction of tari from the kitul to be a very 
simple process— all that is required, as they 
suppose, being to bind the flower-bud with a 
string and cut off the end of it. I was of that 
opinion too, until I tried my hand at the busi- 
ness ; but I then found that it was not quite 
so simple an afTair as I had imsgined. By 
merely binding and cutting the flower-bud, half 
a pint or a jiint of tari in twenty-four honre 
might be obtained, l.ut even that little wonld 
stop in the courwe of a week or so, by reason 
of the hardening of the flower-spikes, after which 
no more tari could be got from the same flower. 
In order to obtain tari from the spatlices of 
palm trees it is necessary, not merely to bind 
and cut the spadix, but also check the natural 
tendency of the flower-spikes to pass from the 
saccharine into the woody stage. Most of the 
jnggeiy made in India is obtaine<l fiom a 
species of date— the Phaiiic «j//iT47ris— and the 
tari of the date is said to be obtained from a 
notch cut in the stem of the tree just Ijelow 
the inflorescence ; but I venture to doubt tliii 
and think it more likely that the taii of the date 
is. like that of otVier palm trees, obtained from 
the flower-bud, and that the real object of notch- 
ing the stem of the tree is, not to obtain tari 
from the notch, but to lialf kiil the spadix and 
thereby check its development. In the coconut 
and palmyra the development of the spadix is 
retarded by constantly beating it with a wooden 
implement made for the purpose, or with the 
solid end of a buft'alo horn ; but the spadix of 
the kitul is too brittle to bear such treatment 
as that, and other means must therefore be 
adapted with it. The native jaggery people 
generally succeed in obtaining tari from the tree, 
but they do so by followiog traditional methods 
of the real effects of which they are ignorant ; 
and when the operation proves a failure, as 
does occasionally happen, even with men experi- 
enced in the work, the failure is a.<=cribed not 
to any want of knowledge or want of skill on 
the part of the operator, but it is either thought 
that the operator has an "unlucky hand," or 
the blame of the failuft is cast upon the tree. 
Those who are desirous of obtaining tari from 
tilt kitul must make up their minds to the dis- 
figurement and injury of the tree, because, with- 
out spoiling the beauty of the tree, it is no more 
possible to obtain tari from it in profitable 
quantity than it is to "eat your cake and have 
it." The jaggery people think it necessary to 
expose the tender flower spikes to tlie sunshine, 
and for this reason, the first thing they do, when 
they take a tree in hand, is to lop off any 
leaves that may be shading the spadix. Then 
they take the bracts and spathes ofi' it, and leave 
