214 THE COCAL. 



inside will gradually harden into that sweetmeat wliicli little 

 boys eat off stalls and barrows in the street ; the first delicate 

 deposit of which is the cream in the green nut. This is 

 albumen, intended to nourish the young palm till it has 

 grown leaves enough to feed on the air, and roots enough to 

 feed on the soil; and the birth of that young palm is in itself 

 a mystery and a miracle, well w^orth considering. ]\Iuch has 

 been written on it, of which I, unfortunately, have read 

 very little : but I can at least tell what I have seen with 

 my own eyes. 



If you search among the cream-layer at the larger end of 

 the nut, you will find, gradually separating itself from the 

 mass, a little white lump, like the stalk of a very young 

 mushroom. That is the ovule. In that lies the life, the 

 " forma formativa," of the future tree. How that life works, 

 according to its kind, who can tell ? What it does, is this : it 

 is locked up inside a hard woody shell, and outside that shell 

 are several inches of tough tangled fibre. How can it get out, 

 as soft and seemingly helpless as a baby's finger ? 



All know that there are three eyes in the monkey's face, as 

 the children call it, at the butt of the nut. Two of these eyes 

 are blind, and filled up with hard wood. They are rudiments 

 hints that the nut ought to have, perhaps had uncounted 

 ages since, not one ovule, but three, the type-number in 

 palms. One ovule alone is left ; and that is opposite the 



