a dwarfish
palm; and some sago is made from it for native use in Travancore,
Mysore, and Wynaad, and the jungles in the East Indies.

The trunk of the sago palm is five or six feet round, and it grows to
the height of about 20 feet. It can only be propagated by seed. It
flourishes best in bogs and swampy marshes; a good plantation being
often a bog, knee deep. The pith producing the sago is seldom of use
till the tree is fourteen or fifteen years old; and the tree does not
live longer than thirty years. Mr. Crawfurd says there are four
varieties of this palm; the cultivated, the wild, one distinguished by
long spines on the branches, and a fourth destitute of these spines,
and called by the natives female sago. This and the cultivated species
afford the best farina; the spiny variety, which has a slender trunk,
and the wild tree, yield but an inferior quality of sago. The
farinaceous matter afforded by each plant is very considerable, 500
lbs. being a frequent quantity, while 300 lbs. may be taken as the
common average produce of each tree.

Supposing the plants set at a distance of ten feet apart, an acre
would contain 435 trees, which, on coming to maturity in fifteen
years, would yield at the before-mentioned rate 120,500 lbs. annually
of farinaceous matter. The sago meal, in its raw state, will keep good
about a month. The Malays and natives of the Eastern Islands, with
whom it forms the chief article of sustenance, partially bake it in
earthenware moulds into small hard cakes, which will keep for a
considerable time. In Java the word "saga" signifies bread. The sago
palm (_Metroxylon Sagus_) is one of the smallest of its tribe, seldom
reaching to more than 30 feet in height, and grows only in a region
extending west to Celebes and Borneo, north to Mindanao, south to
Timor, and east to Papua. Ceram is its chief seat, and there large
forests of it are found. The edible farina is the central pith, which
varies considerably in different trees, and as to the time required
for its attaining proper maturity. It is eaten by the natives in the
form of pottage. A farina of an inferior kind is supplied by the
Gomuti palm (_Borassus gomutus_), another tree peculiar to the Eastern
Archipelago growing in the valleys of hilly tracts.

At so great a distance it is difficult to decide as to which of these
trees really produce the ordinary sagos of commerce, for there are
several kinds. Planche, in an excellent memoir on the sago