200 THE COCAL. 



amber hue wliicli we remarked in the very first specimens 

 seen at St. Thomas's. But this is, certainly, the mark whicli 

 distinguishes the Coco palm not merely from the cold 

 dark green of the Palmiste, or the silvery grey of the Jagua, 

 but from any other tree which I have ever seen. 



When inside the Cocal, the air is full of this amber light. 

 Gradually the eye analyses the cause of it, and finds it to be 

 the resultant of many other hues, from bright vermilion to 

 bright green. Above, the latticed light which breaks between 

 and over the innumerable leaflets of the fruit fronds comes 

 down in warmest green. It passes not over merely, but 

 through, the semi-transparent straw and amber of the older 

 leaves. It falls on yellow spadices and flowers, and rich brown 

 spathes, and on great bunches of green nuts, to acquire from 

 them more yellow yet ; for each fruit-stalk and each flower- 

 scale at the base of the nut is veined and tipped with bright 

 orange. It pours down the stems, semi-grey on one side, 

 then yellow, and then, on the opposite side, covered with 

 a powdery lichen varying in colour from orange up to clear 

 vermilion, and spreads itself over a floor of yellow sand and 

 brown fallen nuts, and the only vegetation of which, in gene- 

 ral, is a long crawling Echites, with pairs of large cream-white 

 flowers. Thus the transparent shade is flooded with gold. 

 One looks out through it at the chequer-work of blue sky, 

 all the more intense from its contrast; or at a long whirl 



