«< MONTHLY. Oo 
Vol. XVII.] COLOMBO, MAY 2xd, 1898. [Nd 11 . 
THE HOME OF “CARYOTA URENS.” 
THE Ceylon Jaggery Palm. 
HERE is generally speaking, 
to the youthful mind a cer- 
tain glamour surrounding the 
term Palm, primarily pro- 
duced perhaps by tne fre* 
quent mention of the name 
in holy writ, and the repre- 
sentations of the tree in books 
and pamphlets written tor the young. As a 
child, the first book I liad the patience to read 
from cover to cover was Paul and Virginia, and 
it was only very recently that I stumbled across 
a copy of the same book, and read it again 
with interest. The first reading gave birth to 
the longing to visit the tropics. This desire grew 
till I reached the state of manhood, when it was 
somewhat suddenly gratified, and I set sail in 
the year 1862 for India. 
In those days Palms were not to be seen on 
“ coster’s ” barrows, otherwise the desire to visit 
foreign climes for the sake of seeing their 
Palm-groves might have been somewhat damped. 
I had visited the Palm-house in the Edinburgh 
Botanical Gardens, and before embarking at 
Southampton I paid a hurried visit to Kew. 
What I saw at these two places only whetted 
my desire to persue my journey to the East. 
Arrived at Malta, I had the satisfaction of 
seeing Palms growing, not under glass, but under 
the sunny sky. Alexandria came next with its 
cloud of windmills and clusters of Date palms. 
Then the journey from thence to Cairo revealed 
a country mostly under water, with the stems 
of the Date-palms in the numerous groves standing 
in the flood, and gratefully taking up the revi- 
vifying waters of the Nile, their plumes tossing 
and waving as it in delight. Bombay, with its 
limited number of cultivated Coconut Palms 
brought renewed pleasurable feelings ; but Calicut 
being my destination. I was totally unprepared 
for the glorious sight of cultivated Coco and 
other Palms which met my view as 1 coasted 
along the Malabar coast for several hundred 
miles in a native craft. 
At first I was puzzled to know what the green 
belt reaching to the very sea consisted of. Our 
craft keeping well off shore, it was not till app-^ 
roaching the port of Calicut that I came to know 
that this broad evergreen band, reaching for so 
many hundred miles, was made up solely of Palms, 
the Coconut predominating, of course, with au 
occasional patch of Areca and other species. 
On landing late in the evening I was conducted 
to the honse of a friend situated on rising ground, 
and commanding a full view of this wonderful 
Palm zone. I slept that nigiic in an upstairs- 
room with a spacious balcony, used in these hot 
climes as a prominade in the mornings and eve- 
nings. At daybreak I was aroused from a re- 
freshing sleep by a native servant, who brought 
me a welcome cup ot tea and slice of toast. 
Light was streaming in by the balcony windows. 
The sea-breeze had just begun to blow, and I 
could hear the distant murmur of tlie waves on 
the sea-shore, the plaintive screams from the flocks 
of kites as they flitted past, with heads bent 
downwards in search of their morning meal. 
These sounds were all that disturbed the silence 
of the morning air. As I stepped on to the 
balcony I shall never forget the sight that pre- 
sented itself to my gaze. I looked down upon 
a veritable sea of Palms, gently weaving theiv 
THE Cey 
