52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



for household use in the tropics, the shell hasn't yet solidified into a 

 hard, stony coat, but still remains quite soft enough to be readily cut 

 through with a sharp table-knife — just like young walnuts picked for 

 pickling. If you cut one across while it's in this unsophisticated 

 state, it is easy enough to see the arrangement of the interior, and 

 the part borne by the milk in the development and growth of the ma- 

 ture nut. The ordinary tropical way of opening cocoa-nuts for table, 

 indeed, is by cutting off the top of the shell and rind in successive 

 slices, at the end where the three pores are situated, until you reach 

 the level of the water, which fills up the whole interior. The nutty 

 part around the inside of the shell is then extremely soft and jelly- 

 like, so that it can be readily eaten with a spoon : but as a matter of 

 fact very few people ever do eat the flesh at all. After their first few 

 months in the tropics, they lose the taste for this comparatively indi- 

 gestible part, and confine themselves entirely (like patients at a Ger- 

 man spa) to drinking the water. A young cocoa-nut is thus seen to 

 consist, first of a green outer skin, then of a fibrous coat, which after- 

 ward becomes the hair, and next of a harder shell which finally gets 

 quite woody ; while inside all comes the actual seed or unripe nut it- 

 self. The office of the cocoa-nut water is the deposition of the nutty 

 part around the side of the shell ; it is, so to speak, the mother-liquid, 

 from which the harder eatable portion is afterward derived. This 

 state is not uncommon in embryo seeds. In a very young pea, for ex- 

 ample, the inside is quite watery, and only the outer skin is at all 

 solid, as we have all observed when green peas first come into season. 

 But the special peculiarity of the cocoa-nut consists in the fact that 

 this liquid condition of the interior continues even after the nut is 

 ripe, and that is the really curious point about the milk in the cocoa- 

 nut which does actually need accounting for. 



In order to understand it one ought to examine a cocoa-nut in the 

 act of budding, and to do this it is by no means necessary to visit the 

 West Indies or the Pacific Islands ; all you need to do is to ask a Co- 

 vent Garden fruit-salesman to get you a few " growers," On the voy- 

 age to England, a certain number of precocious cocoa-nuts, stimulated 

 by the congenial warmth and damp of most ship-holds, usually begin 

 to sprout before their time ; and these waste nuts are sold by the 

 dealers at a low rate to East End children and inquiring botanists 

 An examination of a " grower " very soon convinces one what is the 

 use of the milk in the cocoa-nut. 



It must be duly boi-ne in mind, to begin with, that the prime end 

 and object of the nut is not to be eaten raw by the ingenious monkey, 

 or to be converted by lordly man into cocoa-nut biscuits, or cocoa-nut 

 pudding, but simply and solely to reproduce the cocoa-nut palm in 

 sufficient numbers to future generations. For this purpose the nut 

 has slowly acquii-ed by natural selection a number of protective de- 

 fenses against its numerous enemies, which serve to guard it admira- 



