Coconuts

19. Coconuts

The ye-tsi, as regards the trunk and leaves, closely resembles the coir-palm and areca-palm.

The fruit grows in the leaves in bunches of several nuts of the size of a 5-pint vessel. It is the biggest of fruits, with the sole exception of the jack-fruit.

When cut, the outer skin is at first green and tender. But after some time, it turns yellow. When kept a long time, the skin shrivels and dries up.

The nut shell contained in the outer skin can be made into vessels. The pulp inside the shell is of a jade-like white, and of an agreeable taste, resembling that of cow’s milk.

The juice inside the pulp is very clear and fragrant when fresh, but when stale it turns muddy and no longer drinkable. In the states of Nanpi, they make wine out of the juice of its flower mixed with syrup.

20. OAK-GALLS

The Mo-shi-tzi comes from Herat.

The tree resembles the camphor-tree, similar to the Chinese acorn p’u-lu (>j^ 25 called ma-ch^a and which is which {^MW- Mosul) in the Ta-sM country. it blossoms once a year and bears a fruit |^), and called sha-mo-lu (fp j^ ^), or edible. The following year it grows what is is the same as mo-sM-td. The year following appear again sha-mo-lu, and the mo-sM-tz’i grow in alternate years, so it to see one root produce diffe- is a valuable article. What a wonderful thing rent fruits Note. 30 The Yu-yang-tsa-tsu, 18,8% appears to be the earliest Chinese work to describe in some detail oak-galls. It says= « Wu-sU-U% (fife ^,) come from Po-ssi (Persia), and in Persian they are to seventy feet high, and eight or nine feet in cir- sixty is ’tree The called mo-ts6 tt)- the third moon its flowers open, they cumference. Theteaves are like peach leaves but larger. In a pill, at first green, but when ripe like round is white and reddish in the center. The seed (^ ^ are pierced by insects, the perfect nuts are 35 a yellowish white. Those with holes in them have been One year the tree produces wu-sM-tei, medicine. make to used are these skin; the without holes in of the size of thefingqr tip and three inches produces po-lu-tei the following it (^ Jp ^) in which is the kernel, like a chestnut, of brown long. On the upper end there is a cup (^) colour and which is’ edible.» only adding the Our author derives most of his information from Ling-wai-tai-ta, 3,4», 40 sha-mo-lu. Wu- m^Chinese oak, royal or shdh-lalut and (p’u-ltt) Mut, Persian names of the oak, represent the Persian »!«««, the word for oak-galls. sM-tsi, mo-sM-m, mo-tso and ma-ch’a, all

Thos. Watters, Essays on the Chinese language, and Sui-shu, 83,16* mention Duarte Barbosa, tou-shi-tz’i as 349. See also supra, p. MO. Wei-shu, 102,12% one of the products of Po-ssi (Persia). speaking of the trade of in the beginning of the fifteenth century, merchants dealt with were magican, awhich are gall- nuts, which they bring from the Levant to Cambay, by way of Mekkah, and they are worth a great deal in China and Java». Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar, 191 (Hakl. Malacca, says that among the articles See. edit.). its Heyd, Hist, du Commerce, II, 644. some doubt whether mau-li, which we have translated by «acorn», should not be See also There is Porter Smith, rendered by «chestnut»; this confusion exists among the Chinese. See butions, 60 5 and Bretschneider, Botanicon Sinicum, II, Contri- 10' 320. 21. EBONY m ^). i% Wu-mon-tzi resembles the coir-palm (/j?^ ^f^)’, an erect tree of it is olive-green colour, growing to a height of an hundred feet and more, with a thick green and highly luxuriant foliage. Jts wood is as hard as iron and 15. lends itself to the manufacture of woodware, being glossy like lacquered ware, for which reason it is wood generally considered a precious (^ ;;fc).

22. SAPAN-WOOD

Su-mu comes from Cambodia.

and juniper. The leaves are habitat is in larly known is The tree resembles the pine like those of the tung-tsHng tree it. “When the bark of a deep red colour and it ^)' (^ pj). Its the uncultivated parts of the hilly country, where the people are allowed to cut sun, m as wa-mu (^ removed and the wood dried is may be used in dying purple. It is in the popu