requiring strength and durability, qualities which, in the palmyra of Ceylon, are pre-eminent.  To the inhabitants of the northern provinces this invaluable tree is of the same importance as the coco-nut palm is to the natives of the south.  Its fruit yields them food and oil; its juice “palm wine” and sugar; its stem is the chief material of their buildings; and its leaves, besides serving as roofs to their dwellings and fences to their farms, supply them with matting and baskets, with head-dresses and fans, and serve as a substitute for paper for their deeds and writings, and for the sacred books, which contain the traditions of their faith.  It has been said with truth that a native of Jaffna, if he be contented with ordinary doors and mud walls, may build an entire house (as he wants neither nails nor iron work), with walls, roof, and covering from the Palmyra palm.  From this same tree he may draw his wine, make his oil, kindle his fire, carry his water, store his food, cook his repast, and sweeten it, if he pleases; in fact, live from day to day dependent on his palmyra alone.  Multitudes so live, and it may be safely asserted that this tree alone furnishes one-fourth the means of sustenance for the population of the northern provinces.

[Footnote 1:  Borassus flabelliformis.  For an account of the Palmyra, and its cultivation in the peninsula of Jaffna, see FERGUSON’S monograph on the Palmyra Palm of Ceylon, Colombo, 1850.]

The Jaggery Palm[1], the Kitool of the Singhalese, is chiefly cultivated in the Kandyan hills for the sake of its sap, which is drawn, boiled down, and crystallised into a coarse brown sugar, in universal use amongst the inhabitants of the south and west of Ceylon, who also extract from its pith a farina scarcely inferior to sago.  The black fibre of the leaf is twisted by the Rodiyas into ropes of considerable smoothness and tenacity.  A single Kitool tree has been pointed out at Ambogammoa, which furnished the support of a Kandyan, his wife, and their children.  A tree has been known to yield one hundred pints of toddy within twenty-four hours.

[Footnote 1:  Caryota urens.]

The Areca[1] Palm is the invariable feature of a native garden, being planted near the wells and water-courses, as it rejoices in moisture.  Of all the tribe it is the most graceful and delicate, rising to the height of forty or fifty feet[2], without an inequality on its thin polished stem, which is dark green towards the top, and sustains a crown of feathery foliage, in the midst of which are clustered the astringent nuts for whose sake it is carefully tended.

[Footnote 1:  A. catechu.]

[Footnote 2:  Mr. Ferguson measured an areca at Caltura which was seventy-five feet high, and grew near a coco-nut which was upwards of ninety feet.  Caltura is, however, remarkable for the growth and luxuriance of its vegetation.]