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Unlike the Negrito, the Sakai is a planter of 
food-crops. Millet is grown on the higher hills and 
dry-growing rice is also sown in the people’s jungle 
clearings, but the tendency seems to be for rice to 
be regarded as a luxury, and quickly consumed, 
while tapioca and other tubers are looked upon as 
the mainstay of Sakai diet. Cultivation is of a 
shifting nature, this being necessitated by exhaus- 
tion of the soil of the hill-sides, and the settlement 
shifts with the cultivation. These are some of the 
factors which have prevented the Sakai from rising 
higher in the scale of civilization. 
Though the Sakai is a cultivator, this does not 
mean that he is not a hunter. In fact he is almost, 
if not quite, as keen a one as the Negrito. Apart 
from traps and snares of many kinds, in the manu- 
facture of which he is an adept, his chief weapon 
for hunting is the blowpipe with its poisoned darts. 
With this he sallies forth in search of game, 
especially monkeys, so frequently indeed that these 
animals are rare in the neighbourhood of Sakai 
clearings. The blowpipe varies considerably in 
length, according to the district from which it comes, 
but it consists essentially of a mouth-piece, generally 
of wood, attached to a long inner tube of bamboo 
which is the “ barrel of the gun,” this being covered 
by a larger, but closely fitting, outer tube of the 
same material, the function of which is purely 
protective. The poisoned darts, carried in a bamboo 
quiver, which has a cover of plaited rattan or of 
Pandanus, are slender shafts of palm-wood, rather 
thinner than a knitting-needle but of about the same 
length, or shorter. They have a conical head of 
pith and their pointed “ business ” ends are covered 
with dark, gummy poison. This poison is taken 
from the Ipoh tree, about which, under the name 
