MALAY BEAR.
PALM SQUIRREL.
Even the birds diminish the produce of the cocoa-nut grove. The Noddy (Sterna stolida) builds his nest between the foot-stalks, and picks so busily at the blossom, when stormy weather prevents him making any long excursions, that on many islands he is considered as a chief cause of the sterility of numerous palms.
In every zone we find nations in a low degree of civilisation living almost exclusively upon a single animal or plant. The Laplander has his reindeer, the Esquimaux his seal, the Sandwich Islander his taro-root; and thus also we find the natives of a great part of the Indian Archipelago depending for their subsistence upon the pith of the Sago palm (Sagus fariniferus). This tree, which is of such great importance to the indolent Malay, as it almost entirely relieves him of the necessity of labour, grows at first very slowly, and is covered with thorns. As soon, however, as the stem is once formed, it shoots upwards with such rapidity that it speedily attains its full height of ten yards, with a girth of five or six feet, losing in this stage its thorny accompaniments. The crown is larger and thicker than that of the cocoa-nut tree; the efflorescence colossal, forming an immense bunch, the branches of which spread out like the arms of a gigantic candelabrum. The tree must, however, be felled before the fruit begins to form, as otherwise the farina would be exhausted, which man destines for his food. When the trunk has been cut and split into convenient pieces, the pith is scooped out, kneaded with water, and strained, to separate the meal from the fibres. One tree will produce from two to four hundredweight of flour, which is mostly consumed on the spot. The Sago palm serves to feed several millions of men, and a great quantity of its produce is exported to Europe.
The Sago palm forms large forests, particularly on swampy ground in Borneo and Sumatra, in the Moluccas and New Guinea. Mushrooms of an excellent flavour frequently cover the mouldering trunks, and in the pith the fat grubs of the Cossus saguarius, a large lamellicorn beetle, are found, which the natives consider a great delicacy when roasted.
The Gomuti (Gomutus vulgaris), which almost rivals the cocoa by the multiplicity of its uses, is likewise a native of the Indian Archipelago. On seeing its rough and swarthy rind, and the dull dark-green colour of its fronds, the stranger wonders how the unsightly tree is allowed to grow, but when he has tasted its delicious wine he is astonished not to see it cultivated in greater numbers. Although the outer covering of the fruits has venomous qualities, and is used by the Malays to poison springs, the nuts have a delicate flavour, and the wounded spathe yields an excellent toddy, which, like that of the cocoa and palmyra palms changes by fermentation into an intoxicating wine, and on being thickened by boiling furnishes a kind of black sugar, much used by the natives of Java and the adjacent isles. The reticulum or fibrous net at the base of the petioles of the leaves constitutes the gumatty, a substance admirably adapted to the manufacture of cables, and extensively used for cordage of every description. The small hard twigs found mixed up with this material are employed as pens, besides forming the shafts of the sumpits or poisoned arrows of the Malays, and underneath the reticulum is a soft silky material, used as tinder by the Chinese, and applied as oakum in caulking the seams of ships, while from the interior of the trunk a kind of sago is prepared.
The Areca palm (Areca Catechu) bears a great resemblance to the cocoa-nut tree, but is of a still more graceful form, rising to the height of forty or fifty feet, without any inequality on its thin polished stem, which is dark green towards the top, and sustains a crown of feathery foliage, in the midst of which are clustered the astringent nuts, for whose sake it is carefully tended. In the gardens of Ceylon the areca palm is invariably planted near the wells and watercourses, and the betel plant, which immemorial custom has associated to its use, is frequently seen twining round its trunk.
The Palmyra palm (Borassus flabelliformis) celebrated in verse and prose for the numerous benefits it confers upon mankind, extends from the confines of Arabia to the Moluccas, and is found in every region of Hindostan from the Indus to Siam, the cocoa and the date tree being probably the only palms that enjoy a still wider geographical range. In northern Ceylon, and particularly in the peninsula of Jaffna, it forms extensive forests; and such is its importance in the Southern Dekkan, and along the Coromandel coast, that its fruits afford a compensating resource to seven millions of Hindoos on every occasion of famine or failure of the rice crop. Unlike the cocoa, which gracefully bends under its ponderous crown, the palmyra rises vertically to its full height of seventy or eighty feet, and presents a truly majestic sight when laden with its huge clusters of fruits, each the size of an ostrich’s egg, and of a rich brown tint, fading into bright golden at its base. It is not till the tree has attained a mature age that its broad fan-like leaves begin to detach themselves from the stem; they climb from the ground to its summit in spiral convolutions, forming a dense cover for many animals—ichneumons, squirrels, and monkeys, that resort to it for concealment. In these hiding-places the latter might easily defy the sportsman; but they frequently fall victims to a silly curiosity, for when he is accompanied by his dog, they cannot resist the temptation of watching the animal’s movements, and, coming forth to peep, expose themselves to a fatal shot.
The stalks of the decayed leaves remain partly attached to the trunk, affording supports to a profusion of climbing and epiphytic plants, which hide the stem under a brilliant tapestry of flower and verdure.