It is easy to identify the toddy-tapper by the indurated skin of the palms, fingers, inner side of the forearms, and the instep. The business of toddy-tapping involves expert climbing, while carrying a considerable paraphernalia, with no adventitious aid other than can be got out of a soft grummet of coir to keep the feet near together, while the hands, with the arms extended, grasp the palm tree. The profession is rarely adopted before the age of eighteen, but I have seen a man who said he began when he was twelve years old. It is very hard work. A tapper can work about fifteen trees, each of which he has to climb three times a day. In the northern districts of the Madras Presidency, among the Telugu population, the toddy-drawers use a ladder about eight or nine feet in length, which is placed against the tree, to avoid climbing a third or a fourth of it. While in the act of climbing up or down, they make use of a wide band, which is passed round the body at the small of the back, and round the tree. This band is easily fastened with a toggle and eye. The back is protected by a piece of thick soft leather. It gives great assistance in climbing, which it makes easy. All over the southernmost portion of the peninsula, among the Shanans and Tiyans, the ladder and waist-band are unknown. They climb up and down with their hands and arms, using only the grummet on the feet. The Tiyan toddy-tapper's equipment consists of a short-handled hatchet, about seven inches square, of thin iron, sheathed in a wooden case, and fastened to a waist-belt composed of several strings of coir yarn, to which is hung a small pot of gummy substance obtained by bruising the leaves of the aichil plant. A vessel holding a couple of gallons, made out of the spathe of the areca palm, is used for bringing down the toddy. Tucked into the waist-belt is a bone loaded with lead at either end, which is used for tapping the palm to bring out the juice. A man once refused to sell at any price one of these bones--the femur of a sambar (Cervus unicolor), which had such virtue that, according to its owner, it would fetch palm juice out of any tree. The garb of the tapper at work consists of a short cloth round the loins, and (always during the rains, and often at other times) a head-covering somewhat pointed in shape, made of the leaves of the cocoanut palm placed together as in a clinker-built boat, or of a rounded shape, made out of the spathe of the areca palm. The toddy-tapper should go through the show of reverence by touching the cocoanut tree with the right hand, and then applying his hand to the forehead, every time he prepares to climb a tree.