cups, umbrellas, and tobacco-pipes.  The fruit is least esteemed, and as the blossoms are wounded for the tuac or toddy, there is not much of it:  It is about as big as a large turnip, and covered, like the cocoa-nut, with a fibrous coat, under which are three kernels, that must be eaten before they are ripe, for afterwards they become so hard that they cannot be chewed; in their eatable state they taste not unlike a green cocoa-nut, and, like them, probably they yield a nutriment that is watery and unsubstantial.

[Footnote 108:  Few things are so nutritious to animals as sugar; and vegetable substances, in general, are nutritious in proportion to the quantity of it they contain.  How it can be pernicious, then, as an ingredient in diet, it would be very difficult to show, without disparaging the wisdom and goodness by which the world is supported.  But in fact there is not the least reason for such an opinion; and if the strongest assertions of most respectable men are at all to be regarded, a very different one, indeed, must be maintained.  A few quotations may satisfy the reader on the subject, and dispossess him of unfounded prejudices reluctantly imbibed in the nursery.  “So palatable, salutary, and nourishing is the juice of the cane, that every individual of the animal creation drinking freely of it, derives health and vigour from its use.  The meagre and sickly among the negroes exhibit a surprising alteration in a few weeks after the mill is set in action.  The labouring horses, oxen, and mules, though almost constantly at work during this season, yet being indulged with plenty of the green tops of this noble plant, and some of the scummings from the boiling-house, improve more than at any one period of the year.  Even the pigs and poultry fatten on the refuse.”  So says Mr Edwards.  Two physicians quoted by him speak to the same effect,—­take the words of one of them; Dr Rush, of Philadelphia,—­“Sugar affords the greatest quantity of nourishment in a given quantity of matter, of any substance in nature.  Used alone, it has fattened horses and cattle in St Domingo, for a period of several months.  The plentiful use of sugar in diet is one of the best preventatives that ever has been discovered, of the diseases which are produced by worms.  The plague has never been known in this country, where sugar composes a material part of the diet of the inhabitants.”  Dr Mosely, in his Treatise on Sugar, speaks equally confidently of the nutritious and beneficial effects of this substance.  Now, indeed, the concurrent testimony and opinions of medical men are so decided on the subject, that it seems impossible to entertain any other sentiment.  The principal objection to the use of sugar in diet, is what applies to certain cases only, when the stomach and bowels are particularly disordered, or where there is a strong tendency to an over full state of the blood-vessels, tending to the production of palsy or apoplexy, which this article, from its very nutritious properties, and because also it perhaps undergoes a sort of fermentation in the stomach, by which something of the nature of wine may be produced, would be apt rather to augment.—­E.]