GOMTTO, AREND, or EJ00 PALM (Arenga sacclutrifera, Saguerus Rumpltii, or Borassus gomutus), an important palm which grows in Cochin China and in the interior of Java, Sumatra, Celebes, and Amboyna, on dry ground. The stein is 20 to 30 ft. high; the leaves 15 to 25 ft. long, piunatcd. The flowers are in bunches 6 to 10 ft. long; the fruit is a yellowish-brown, three-seeded berry, of the size of a small apple, and extremely acrid. The stem, when young, is entirely covered with sheaths of fallen leaves, and black horse-hairlike fibers, which issue in great abundance from their margins; but as the tree increases in age, these drop off, leaving an elegant naked columnar stein. The strongest of the fibers, resembling porcupine quills in thickness, are used by the Malays as styles for writing on the leaves of other palms. But the finer fibers are by far the most valuable; they are well known in eastern commerce as Gomuto or Ejoo fiber, and are much used for making strong cordage, particularly for the cables and standing-rigging of ships, European as well as native. Want of pliancy renders
them less fit for running-rigging, and for many other purposes. They need no prepara tion but spinning or twisting. No ropes of vegetable fiber are so imperishable, when often wet,as those made of 'Gomuto fiber. At the base of the leaves of the Gomuto palm there is a fine wooly material, called bara, much employed in calking ships and stuffing cushions. The saccharine sap, obtained in great abundance by cutting the spadiees of the flowers, is a delicious beverage, and by fermentation yields an intoxi cating wine (neroo), from which a spirituous called brum is made. In Java a brown sugar, much used by the natives, is made by boiling the sap.