v 
1 Dec., 1897.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 461 
obtaining palm oil, the great staple of trade along the rivers of West 
Equatorial Africa. The palm from which the oil is obtained may be 
said to be a wild product of those regions, and requires no planting. 
Yet it receives a certain amount of attention at the hands of the 
natives in the shape of pruning, lopping off dead and dying leaves, and 
tapping some of the larger leaves, with the object generally, it is presumed, of 
improving the fruit. The latter grows in large clusters, nearly pear-shaped, 
or somewhat like a huge branch of very bright-red grapes,* some clusters 
counting, perhaps, a thousand nuts which are partially embedded in a kind of 
fibrous matting. The nuts and fruit are the size of and nearly the shape of a 
pigeon’s egg, of a bright-red colour, tinged sometimes with yellow and in 
some cases deepening in shade almost to black. The nut is composed of three 
parts: the outer covering is from 43-inch to 4-inch in thickness of a fibrous 
nature, and in this is the oil. The inner nut is cracked, and the kernel, which 
produces a fine white oil, is sold. The <Agriculturist goes on to say, “ This 
African palm grows so readily in Ceylon that it may come to rival the 
cocoanut and palmyra—indeed, exceed both in its ready growth.” 
William Brothers, of Heneratgoda, Ceylon, offer seed of Hleis guincensis 
for 10s. per 100. A spadix of the fruit of Hicis guineensis has been sent from 
the Kamerunga State Nursery to the Departmental Museum for inspection by 
the public. The palm and the spadix are illustrated in this issue of the 
Journal. 
* A bunch of oil palm nuts is persistent and spiny, not pendulous, 
