COCONUT.

The coconut-tree, kalapa, nior (Cocos nucifera), may be esteemed the next important object of cultivation from the uses to which its produce is applied; although by the natives of Sumatra it is not converted to such a variety of purposes as in the Maldives and those countries where nature has been less bountiful in other gifts.  Its value consists principally in the kernel of the nut, the consumption of which is very great, being an essential ingredient in the generality of their dishes.  From this also, but in a state of more maturity, is procured the oil in common use near the sea-coast, both for anointing the hair, in cookery, and for burning in lamps.  In the interior country other vegetable oils are employed, and light is supplied by a kind of links made of dammar or resin.  A liquor, commonly known in India by the name of toddy, is extracted from this as well as from other trees of the palm-kind.  Whilst quite fresh it is sweet and pleasant to the taste, and is called nira.  After four and twenty hours it acidulates, ferments, and becomes intoxicating, in which state it is called tuak.  Being distilled with molasses and other ingredients it yields the spirit called arrack.  In addition to these but of trifling importance are the cabbage or succulent pith at the head of the tree, which however can be obtained only when it is cut down, and the fibres of the leaves, of which the natives form their brooms.  The stem is never used for building nor any carpenter’s purposes in a country where fine timber so much abounds.  The fibrous substance of the husk is not there manufactured into cordage, as in the west of India where it is known by the name of coir; rattans and eju (a substance to be hereafter described) being employed for that purpose.  The shell of the nut is but little employed as a domestic utensil, the lower class of people preferring the bamboo and the labu (Cucurbita lagenaria) and the better sort being possessed of coarse chinaware.  If the filaments surrounding the stem are anywhere manufactured into cloth, as has been asserted, it must be in countries that do not produce cotton, which is a material beyond all comparison preferable:  besides that certain kind of trees, as before observed, afford in their soft and pliable inner bark what may be considered as a species of cloth ready woven to their hands.

This tree in all its species, stages, fructification, and appropriate uses has been so elaborately and justly described by many writers, especially the celebrated Rumphius in his Herbarium Amboinense, and Van Rheede in his Hortus Malabaricus, that to attempt it here would be an unnecessary repetition, and I shall only add a few local observations on its growth.  Every dusun is surrounded with a number of fruit-bearing trees, and especially the coconut where the soil and temperature will allow them to grow, and, near the bazaars or sea-port towns, where the concourse of inhabitants is in general much greater than in the