This tree is properly a native of India, where it attains a height of eighty feet, and bears fruit in its sixth year.

In other countries, it is scarcely fifty feet high, and does not bear fruit before it is twelve or fifteen years old.

This tree is, perhaps, the most useful one in the known world.

It produces large and nutritious fruit, excellent milk, large leaves that are used for covering in and roofing huts, materials for strong cordage, the clearest oil for burning, mats, woven stuffs, colouring matter, and even a kind of drink called surr, toddy, or palm brandy, and obtained by incisions made in the crown of the tree, to which, during an entire month, the Hindoos climb up every morning and evening, making incisions in the stem and hanging pots underneath to catch the sap which oozes out.
The rough condition of the bark facilitates considerably the task of climbing up the tree.

The Hindoos tie a strong cord round the trunk and their own body, and another round their feet, which they fix firmly against the tree; they then raise themselves up, drawing the upper rope with their hands and the lower one with the points of their feet, after them.