THE LUM TREE.
Poets and moralists, judging by what they see in England, have concluded that fruits of a small size, whose fall cannot be dangerous to man, invariably grow on high trees, while large fruits, such as the pumpkin, are only found trailing on the ground. But a visit to the tropics would soon convince them of their error, for two of the largest and heaviest fruits known, the Brazilian nut (Bertholletia) and the Durian of the Indian Archipelago, grow on high forest trees, from which they fall down when ripe, and frequently wound or kill the natives. ‘From this,’ says Mr. Wallace, ‘we can learn two things—in the first place, not to draw general conclusions from a locally very limited knowledge of nature, and, secondly, that trees and fruits, as well as the manifold productions of the animal kingdom, have not been exclusively organised with a reference to man.’
A CEYLONESE COCOA-NUT OIL-MILL.
CHAPTER XIII.
PALMS AND FERNS.
The Cocoa-nut Tree—Its hundred Uses—Cocoa-nut Oil—Coir—Porcupine Wood—Enemies of the Cocoa Palm—The Sago Palm—The Saguer—The Gumatty—The Areca Palm—The Palmyra Palm—The Talipot—The Cocoa de Mer—Ratans—A Ratan bridge in Ceylon—The Date Tree—The Oil Palms of Africa—The Oil Trade at Bonny—Its vast and growing Importance—American Palms—The Carnauba—The Ceroxylon andicola—The Cabbage Palm—The Gulielma speciosa—The Piaçava—Difficulties of the Botanist in ascertaining the various species of Palms—Their wide geographical range—Different Physiognomy of the Palms according to their height—The Position and Form of their Fronds—Their Fruits—Their Trunk—The Yriartea ventricosa—Arborescent Ferns.
The graceful acanthus gave the imaginative Greeks the first idea of the Corinthian capital; but the shady canopy of the cocoa-nut tree would no doubt form a still more beautiful ornament of architecture, were it possible for art to imitate its feathery fronds and carve their delicate tracery in stone.
Essentially littoral, this noble palm requires an atmosphere damp with the spray and moisture of the sea to acquire its full stateliness of growth, and while along the bleak shores of the Northern Ocean the trees are generally bent landward by the rough sea breeze, and send forth no branches to face its violence, the cocoa, on the contrary, loves to bend over the rolling surf, and to drop its fruits into the tidal wave. Wafted by the winds and currents over the sea, the nuts float along without losing their germinating power, like other seeds which migrate through the air; and thus, during the lapse of centuries, the cocoa-palm has spread its wide domain from coast to coast throughout the whole extent of the tropical zone. It waves its graceful fronds over the emerald islands of the Pacific, fringes the West Indian shores, and from the Philippines to Madagascar crowns the atolls, or girds the sea-border of the Indian Ocean.