Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/29

 PALM 19 bers of these canes are imported into Europe and America, and as new uses are constantly found for them, the consumption rapidly in- creases. The ease with which they are split, and the strength of very small splints, adapts them to a great variety of wares. One of their commonest uses is to make chair bot- toms ; chairs are often made entirely of rattans, the whole canes forming the framework, which is filled in with a fabric of split ones; sofas and lounges are made largely of rattans, as are the bodies of fancy carriages; the whole canes are used for making baskets requiring great strength, while the split canes are woven into the most delicate work baskets for ladies. The Malacca canes, highly esteemed as walk- ing sticks, are the stems of C. Scipiorium, the joints of which are so far apart that a good cane may be made from a single internode; they have a rich reddish brown color, which is due to their being smoked and varnished with the bark on. A portion of the resinous drug dragon's blood is obtained from the fruit of C. Draco, a species which some botanists place in the genus damonorops. The sago of com- merce is mainly furnished by species of sagus, but the pith of other genera affords this form of starch, some of them in sufficient quantities to supply the inhabitants of the countries where they grow with an important share of their food. (See SAGO.) The remaining genus of this group, valuable for its products, is mau- ritia, the moriche or Ita palm of tropical South America. M. flexuosa, especially abundant on the Amazon and other rivers, supplies nearly all the wants of the natives ; during the great inundations they even suspend their dwellings from the trunks ; the skin of the young leaves is spun into cord for making hammocks, the trunk supplies sugar in abundance, and both the sap and the fruit are converted into intoxica- ting beverages. 3. The borassus tribe (loras- sinece) consists of trees with fan-shaped or pin- nate leaves; a woody, fibrous, or (in one ge- nus) net-like spathe, and the fruit a drupe. The principal genus borassus consists of only two species, one of which, B. fldbelliformis, is the magnificent Palmyra palm, found through- out tropical Asia, and celebrated for the great number of its useful products. Its trunk, from 60 to 80 and even 100 ft. high, and 2 ft. in diameter at base, bears a magnificent crown of leaves of a circular fan shape, w r hich inclu- ding the petiole are 10 ft. long; these are used to thatch houses, to cover floors and ceilings when plaited into mats, and to form a great number of useful articles, from bags and bas- kets to umbrellas and hats; they also serve as paper, which is written upon with a style ; all the important books in Cingalese relative to the religion of Buddha are written upon the lami- nae of this palm. The fruit is in bunches of 15 or 20, about the size of a child's head, and contains three seeds as large as a goose's egg ; the albumen of these is edible when young, but in the ripe seed it is horny; the coating surrounding the seeds is a thick fibrous pulp, which is roasted and eaten ; the young seed- lings of this tree are cultivated as an article of food, to be eaten in the green state, or they are dried and made into a coarse meal, which is Palmyra Palm (Borassus flabelliformis). regarded as very nutritious. The most impor- tant products of this palm are palm wine (toddy} and sugar (jaggery} ; these are yielded by many other species and in other countries, but the methods of obtaining them are essen- tially the same. When the flower spike makes its appearance, the operator ascends the tree by the aid of a vine or rope passed loosely around his own body and that of the tree ; he ties the spathe securely, so that it cannot ex- pand, and beats the base of the spike with a short stick ; this beating, which is supposed to determine a flow of sap toward the wounded part, is repeated for several successive morn- ings ; a thin slice is removed from the end of the spathe ; about the eighth day the sap begins to flow, and is caught in a jar ; the daily flow is two pints or more, and continues for four or five months, the jar being emptied every morn- ing, and a thin slice being at the same time removed from the end of the spathe. This juice readily ferments, and is then palm wine or toddy, which is drunk in that state or is dis- tilled to separate the spirit, known as arrack ; if allowed to pass into the acetous fermenta- tion, toddy is converted into vinegar. "When sugar is to be made from the juice, it is collect- ed several times a day, and the receiving jars are cleansed with lime to prevent fermenta- tion ; it is boiled down and treated in the same manner as cane juice. The remaining species, B. ^Ethiopum, of the central part of tropical Africa, furnishes products similar to those of