Identifier: historyofmankind01ratz (find matches)
Title: The history of mankind
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology
Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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w-guns, and various musical instruments. The ediblebanana is cultivated everywhere ; the arenga palm affords the brown sugar of thecountry. The flower spike is chopped off and the juice allowed to flow througha bamboo tube, it is then evaporated in metal basins and partaken of as palmwine. In the low lands the coco-palm is widely found ; clove and nutmeg alsobelong to the archipelago, and the bread-fruit tree to its eastern regions ; and itis one of the most important districts as regards the production of coffee, rice,sugar, spices, and tobacco. Rice is the principal article of food, especially in thewest, and the native names for it overthrow the theory that this plant and itscultivation were imported from India. Among fruit trees the durian, with its darkleaves and lofty stem, bears a fruit said to be the best on earth. The Musatextilis of the Philippines furnishes manilla hemp. Among timber trees, the twoaraucarias of Borneo are of importance in native architecture. The Dyaks make
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BODILY CONFORMATION AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF MALAYS 393 a black varnish for colouring their teeth from Chalcas paniculata and a sort ofArtocarpus. In Formosa, the mountains of the interior are covered with thecamphor tree wherever the devastations of the Chinese have not penetrated.In lava and Borneo arrow poison is furnished by species of strydmos and antiaris^and the Malays flog thieves with freshly cut sprigs of a shrubby stinging nettle. Tracts of meadow and heath formed by cutting away timber often have acertain importance ethnographically. In Formosa the Chinese territory is almosttreeless, and is planted with tea, coarse grass taking the place of the forest. Inthe highlands of Sumatra, the extent of the grass land has caused people to inferearlier settlements, since in these regions nothing but cultivation can drive back theforest. The nutritious grass of these clearings has caused them to becomepasturage for the abundant cattle and horses of the Battaks ; on the other hand,in

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