thirsty countries is no doubt often a great boon. The white flesh--a
familiar school-boy dainty--is eaten raw and cooked. It produces oil,
and is used in the manufacture of stearine candles. It is also used to
make _marine soap_, which will lather in salt water. The wood of the
palm is used for ornamental joinery, the leaves for thatch and
basket-work, the fibre for cordage and cocoa-nut matting, and the husk
for fuel and brushes.

Cocoa and chocolate come from another palm (_Theobroma cacao_), which is
cultivated largely in South America and the West Indies.

Sago and tapioca are made from the starch yielded by several species of
palm. The little round balls of sago are formed from a white powder
(sago flour, as it is called), just as homoeopathic pillules are
formed from sugar. It is possible to see chemists make pills from
boluses to globules, but the Malay Indians are said jealously to keep
the process of "pearling" sago a trade secret. Tapioca is only another
form of sago starch. Sago flour is now imported into England in
considerable quantities. It is used for "dressing" calicoes.

Among those products of the palm which we import most liberally is
"vegetable ivory."

Vegetable ivory is the kernel of the fruit of one of the most beautiful
of palms (_Phytelephas macrocarpa_).

This Prince of Vegetation is a native of South America. "It is
short-stemmed and procumbent, but has a magnificent crown of light green
ostrich-feather-like leaves, which rise from thirty to forty feet high."
The fruit is as big as a man's head. Two or three millions of the nuts
are imported by us every year, and applied to all the purposes of use
and ornament for which real ivory is available.

The Coquilla-nut palm (_Attalea funifera_), whose fruit is about the
size of an ostrich-egg, also supplies a kind of vegetable ivory.

Our ideas of palm-trees are so much derived from the date palm of Judaea,
that an erect and stately growth is probably inseparably connected in
our minds with the Princes of Vegetation. But some of the most beautiful
are short-stemmed and creeping; whilst others fling giant arms from tree
to tree of the tropical forests, now drooping to the ground, and then
climbing up again in very luxuriance of growth. Many of the rattan palms
(_Calamus_) are of this character. They wind in and out, hanging in
festoons from the branches, on which they lean in princely
condescension, with stems upwards of a thousand feet in leng