This view explains the fact of starch being found accumulated in amazing quantity in some plants, more particularly at certain periods of their existence, as in the cases I am now to cite. The fertility of some palm-trees is very great, and to furnish nutriment to the flowers, fruit, and seeds, an enormous supply of starch is needed; accordingly, in these we find the stem a complete storehouse of this essential principle. Thus the several palms and palm-like plants, which yield sago, such as the _sagus Rumphii_, _cycas circinalis_, _C. revoluta_, _corypha umbraculifera_, _caryota urens_, and _phoenix farinifera_--trees which are mostly confined within the tropics, at the moment when the spadices or sheaths containing the bunches of flowers are visible but not unfolded, furnish an immense portion of the food of the natives. The _sagus Rumphii_, which abounds in the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and though one of the humblest of the palm tribe, seldom exceeding thirty feet in height, is yet, except the gomuto, the thickest and largest, alone yields a quantity of nutritious matter far exceeding that of all other cultivated plants, inasmuch as a tree in its fifteenth year produces 600 lbs. of sago, which word, in the language of the Papuas, signifies _bread_, being the staple food of the islanders. To obtain it, the tree must be cut down, and the stem divided into pieces, from which the flour is beaten and washed out[I]. After being cut down, the vegetative power still remains in the root, which again forms a trunk, and this proceeds through its different stages, until it is again subjected to the axe, and made to yield its alimentary contents for the service of man. Nor is the extraordinary productiveness of a single tree the only point worthy of notice, for, being endogenous plants, devoid of branches, an unusual number of them can grow in a small space. Mr. Craufurd calculates that an English acre could contain four hundred and thirty-five sago trees, which would yield one hundred and twenty thousand five hundred pounds avoirdupois of starch, being at the rate of more than eight thousand pounds yearly. Besides the farina or meal, every tree cut down furnishes, in its terminal bud, a luxury which is as much prized as that of the _areca oleracea_, or cabbage palm of the West Indies, and which is eaten either raw as a salad, or cooked. Further, the leaves afford so excellent a material for covering houses, that even in those hot and humid parts of the world, where decomposition goes on so rapidly, it does not require to be renewed oftener than once in seven years.