rrents to be cast up and to vegetate on distant coasts.

The coco-nut palm, being the most useful of its entire tribe to the
natives of the regions in which it grows, and furnishing many valuable
and important commercial products, is the subject of careful cultivation
in many countries. On the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India the
trees grow in vast numbers; and in Ceylon, which is peculiarly well
suited for their cultivation, it is estimated that twenty millions of
the trees flourish. The wealth of a native in Ceylon is estimated by his
property in coco-nut trees, and Sir J. Emerson Tennent noted a law case
in a district court in which the subject in dispute was a claim to the
2520th part of ten of the precious palms. The cultivation of coco-nut
plantations in Ceylon was thus described by Sir J. E. Tennent. "The
first operation in coco-nut planting is the formation of a nursery, for
which purpose the ripe nuts are placed in squares containing about 400
each; these are covered an inch deep with sand and seaweed or soft mud
from the beach, and watered daily till they germinate. The nuts put down
in April are sufficiently grown to be planted out before the rains of
September, and they are then set out in holes 3 ft. deep and 20 to 30
ft. apart.... Before putting in the young plant it is customary to bed
the roots with soft mud and seaweed, and for the first two years they
must be watered and protected from the glare of the sun under shades
made of the plaited fronds of the coco-nut palm, or the fan-like leaves
of the palmyra." The palm begins to bear fruit from the fifth to the
seventh year of its age, each stock carrying from 5 to 30 nuts, the tree
maturing on an average 60 nuts yearly.

The uses to which the various parts of the coco-nut palm are applied in
the regions of their growth are almost endless. The nuts supply no
inconsiderable proportion of the food of the natives, and the milky
juice enclosed within them forms a pleasant and refreshing drink. The
juice drawn from the unexpanded flower spathes forms "toddy," which may
be boiled down to sugar, or it is allowed to ferment and is distilled,
when it yields a spirit which, in common with a like product from other
sources, is known as "arrack." As in other palms, the young bud cut out
of the top of the tree forms an esculent vegetable, "palm cabbage." The
trunk yields a timber (known in European commerce as porcupine wood)
which is used for building, furniture