In Ceylon, house-plasterers use the water of the green cocoa-nut, to which they attribute an adhesive quality in their white and other washes, in which Chunam[128] forms a chief ingredient for the walls of houses, &c. &c.; and the shells of the green cocoa-nut,[129] fixed on stakes, are used as illumination lamps for roads, trees, &c. The pulp in the interior of the young nut is very delicate, easily removed from the shell with a spoon, and may very well be named a vegetable _blanc mange_; in this state it is called _niaa_ by the Tahitans, who use it as well as the natives of other of the Polynesian Islands, in several made dishes. After the fruit is suffered to remain a short time longer, and the pulp becomes firmer, the Tahitans change the name to _Omato_, and the fully ripe nut is called _Opaa_; in this state it is sometimes but seldom eaten, being used principally for making oil, and contains a small quantity of oily milk; it is in this state the nuts are seen and sold in England. In Ceylon, when the nut is fully ripe, it is denominated by the Singalese _Pol_, or _Curry cocoa-nut_, the kernel of which is reduced to a very small size by an instrument called _Hiromane_; (a circle of notched iron fastened to the raised end of a piece of wood;) the kernel thus reduced is placed in a cloth, and water being poured on it, a white juice, which may with propriety be termed “cocoa-nut milk,” is extracted by pressure, and used invariably, either with or without the grated kernel, in their various curries and mulligatawnies. I have never met with the water contained in a cocoa-nut of a brackish taste, as has been asserted, although the tree from which it had been produced had its roots laved by the sprays of the ocean. Mr. Finlayson[130] says, respecting some plantations of cocoa-nut trees, which surrounded a village situated on Pulo Condore, at the extremity of a plain, that “although they grow in great abundance, they are rather stunted in the stem, and their fruit, as well as the fluid it contains, has a peculiar and rather bitter taste.”