PALMS.
The rank of "Princes of the Vegetable King dom," given by grateful natives of tropical countries, is certainly deserved, for the uses to which palm trees are put are without number. "They are among Nature's most generous gifts to uncivilized men" — to quote the words of Wallace who spoke of the bamboo in the East Indies.
To begin with, there are in tropical and sub tropical countries over 1,2oo different kinds of palms. They are mostly trees of slender, un branched stems, crowned or feathered with a graceful head of foliage. All are of the same structure as reeds and grasses, in that they have round stalks composed of a pithy,--tentral part enclosed in a hard rind, and growth is not in dicated by rings of wood added year by year. The flowers are in spikes or clusters, usually com ing out of the crown of the tree, and each flower is on the plan of three. Staminate and pistillate flowers are separate, though the clusters may be on the same or different trees.
Leaves differ in form of blade, but between the palmate and pinnate types, and all have stems, usually with clasping or sheathing bases. Our familiar palm-leaf fan illustrates the palmate form; the funeral palm, the pinnate or feather form. The most exuberant species bears leaves
ten to thirty feet in length. The highest palm trees reach two hundred feet.
An old saying, of tropical origin, perhaps, says there is a use for the palm for every day in the year. The Hindoo goes further; for of one noble species of India he claims eight hundred distinct uses! What claim can be exaggerated for trees that furnish all the parts for a house and the furniture in it: thatch to keep out sun and rain, fibre for clothing, for paper, for ropes, brooms, and rugs; meal for bread, sugar, wine, and a cabbage like vegetable, the heart of the palmetto! Delic ious food and drink come from the coco palm; wax from two species; resin for unnumbered uses from the palm called the "dragon's blood." The savage tips his spears and his poisoned arrows with the spines of certain kinds of palm leaves. He makes knives of keen edge of the thin, hard edges of leaf stems. Tanning materials from palms are used in the making of fine leathers. Dyes are derived from other kinds. Valuable oils are among the best products of palm trees.