Of all the trees, beautiful either in form, height, or the splendid colour of their flowers, so profusely scattered over the face of nature in tropical climes, perhaps none has excited more interest, both for its elegant and majestic growth, as well as for its utility, than this palm, producing fruit, shade, utensils, and numerous other articles, to supply the wants of mankind. These palms impart a grandeur to the tropical landscape; their stems, towering to a great elevation, are crowned at the summit by elegant fronds of gigantic character; they overtop the more diminutive trees, and excite the admiration of the traveller by their elegant and novel appearance, decorating the sea-coasts of large continents, and waving their dark plumes over the insignificant coral-reefs. The cylindrical rough trunk[99] towers to an elevation of one hundred feet, and the terminating crown of feathered fronds gives to them an elegant appearance, more so when seen loaded with fruit in all its different stages, from the first bursting of the spathe displaying the delicate white fruit and minute flowers, to the huge, fully mature nut, in bunches of from twenty to thirty, or more, the ponderous burthen appearing to be suspended on a very fragile stalk. The fecundity of the palms is surprising; a single spathe of the date is said to contain about twelve thousand male flowers; _Alfonsia amygdalina_ has been computed to have two hundred and seven thousand in a spathe, or six hundred thousand upon a single individual, while every bunch of the Seje-palm of the Orinoco bears eight thousand fruit.[100] On the cocoa-palm, frequently two or three hundred nuts may be seen at one time, yielding an inexhaustible supply for the use of man at all seasons of the year. This palm delights in, and grows with the greatest luxuriance in the vicinity of the sea, and is found in great perfection on the south and west coasts of Ceylon; (giving a beautiful appearance to those coasts;) those of Malabar and Coromandel, on the Maldive and Laccadive Islands; those of Polynesia, where it adorns the small coral islands, as well as those of magnitude, glowing in all the brilliancy and beauty of tropical scenery. At Penang and Singapore I remarked these palms to be comparatively unproductive, and they are rarely seen cultivated to any extent.