g elements are taken away.

The man who gets down the _tuba_ has to climb the first tree, on the
trunk of which notches are cut to place his toes in. From under the
tuft of leaves two bamboos are fastened, leading to the next nearest
tree, and so on around the group which is thus connected. The bottom
bamboo serves as a bridge, and the top one as a handrail. Occasionally
a man falls from the top of a trunk 70 or 80 feet high, and breaks his
neck. The occupation of _tuba_ drawing is one of the most dangerous.

When the tree is allowed to produce fruit, instead of yielding _tuba_,
the nuts are collected about every four months. They are brought
down either by a sickle-shaped knife lashed on to the end of a long
pole, or by climbing the tree with the knife in hand. When they are
collected for oil-extraction, they are carted on a kind of sleigh,
[144] unless there be a river or creek providing a water-way, in which
latter case they are tied together, stalk to stalk, and floated in
a compact mass, like a raft, upon which the man in charge stands.

The water or milk found inside a cocoanut is very refreshing to the
traveller, and has this advantage over fresh water, that it serves
to quench the thirst of a person who is perspiring, or whose blood
is highly heated, without doing him any harm.

Well-to-do owners of cocoanut-palm plantations usually farm out to
the poorer people the right to extract the _tuba_, allotting to each
family a certain number of trees. Others allow the trees to bear fruit,
and although the returns are, theoretically, not so good, it pays the
owner about the same, as he is less exposed to robbery, being able
more closely to watch his own interests. The trees bear fruit in the
fifth year, but, meanwhile, care must be taken to defend them from
the browsing of cattle. If they survive that period they will live
for a century. At seven years' growth the cocoanut palm-tree seldom
fails to yield an unvarying average crop of a score of large nuts,
giving a nett profit of about one peso per annum.

The cocoanut is largely used for culinary purposes in the Islands. It
is an ingredient in the native "curry" (of no resemblance to Indian
curry), and is preserved in several ways, the most common being the
_Bocayo_, a sort of cocoanut toffee, and the _Matamis na macapuno_,
which is the soft, immature nut preserved in molasses.

In the Provinces of Tayabas, La Laguna, E. Batangas and district of La
Infanta, the c