aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

198 AROUND THE WORLD.
only tapped to get the juice, but often literally girdled,
destroying the tree itself.
This forest vandalism is now forbidden.
The juice — life-blood of the tree — is caught in
coeoanut-shells, poured into pitchers made from the joints
of large bamboos, and then conveyed to caldrons for boiling
and the further preparations for sale.
Cocoanut-c/roves, being planted in horizontal lines, present
a most beautiful appearance. These trees, running up
some forty feet, unbroken by leaf or branch, are roofed with
deep green foliage. The nuts grow in clusters between the
roots of the leaves and branches at the top. If not picked
when ripe, they drop, and are broken. Planters of large
groves tell me that the noise of falling nuts in night-time
breaks the silence with sounds " weird and ghostly."
Falling
upon the skulls of the natives, they sometimes break
them. When the oil is sought, they are allowed to ripen.
The nuts sell for a penny each. The watery milk within
them is considered as cooling and healthy as nutritious.
FIRE-FLY
JEWELRY.
Lower races and tribes in all lands are fond of pearls,
precious stones, jewehy, — display of all kinds. The Malays,
unable to purchase diamonds, have a little cage-like fixture,
in which they imprison a fire-fly. This, excited, continues
to give out perpetual flashes, quite excelling in brilliancy
the diamond itself. The natives are sufficiently humane to
set them free when the evening party is over. The poor
things are not, as some writers have said, impaled on golden
needles, that, by increasing the agony, the ghtter of the flash
may be intensified. The flash has more the appearance of
electricity than phosphorescence. But what an idea I — imprisoning
harmless insects to attract attention, and minister
to human vanity