THE MAIN GATE ROAD WITH THE CANNA BEDS. [Photo by C. A. Best. 
ground stem^ and after grow- 
ing for about 15 years flower. 
Commercial sago is the starch 
extracted from the very soft 
inner wood of these trunks 
just before the time of flower- 
ings the starch being the 
palm's store of food against 
the drain resulting from seed- 
productions although it is a 
peculiarity of this palm, with- 
out explanation, to produce 
almost invariably infertile 
seeds. To win the starch, 
the ripe trunk is felled ; and 
the inner wood is rasped fine 
enough for the starch to be 
freed. This starch is washed, 
and washed again, until 
clean, when by gentle heat it 
is granulated into the various 
forms that find a sale. 
Lawn A bears by the Gate, along with the Sago-palms, a tree of the Venezuelan Brownea ariza. Then, a little 
further up, first a tree of Brownea capitella ; then a tree of the Indian Saraca declinata. The rose flowers of the 
Browneas make them exceedingly beautiful ; and they, along with Saraca, are interesting, as exhibiting the tender 
sun-shy reddish young foliage so frequent in the Tropics, The genera Brownea and Saraca belong to the large 
family Leguminosae, which is illustrated chiefly upon Lawn F. 
There is a clump of Traveller's Tree, Ravenala madagascariensis, near the Browneas. Its large leaves suggest 
a Banana plant, but they are in two rows on a genuine trunk, whereas the Banana supports its leaves, which are in 
many more rows than two, upon a false trunk made by the inrolled leaf-stalks. The stalks of the leaves of Ravenala so 
overlap that a chamber is constructed between each two, with for sides the leaf-stalk below and the trunk, and for a lid 
the leaf-stalk above ; and in this chamber rain-water collects, entering by such a narrow opening that it is kept pure. 
If the lower leaf-stalk be cut this water runs out ; and it can be drunk. The natives of Madagascar prefer, it is said, 
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