50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NUT. 



By GEANT ALLEN. 



FOR many centuries the occult problem how to account for the 

 milk in the cocoa-nut has awakened the profoundest interest 

 alike of ingenious infancy and of maturer scientific age. Though it 

 can not be truthfully affirmed of it, as of the cosmogony or creation 

 of the world, in " The Vicar of Wakefield," that it " has puzzled the 

 philosophers of all ages " (for Sanchoniathon was certainly ignorant 

 of the very existence of that delicious juice, and Manetho doubtless 

 went to his grave without ever having tasted it fresh from the nut 

 under a tropical veranda), yet it may be safely asserted that for the 

 last three hundred years the philosopher who has not at some time or 

 other of his life meditated uiDon that abstruse question, is unworthy of 

 such an exalted name. The cosmogony and the milk in the cocoa- 

 nut are, however, a great deal closer together in thought than Sancho- 

 niathon or Manetho, or the rogue who quoted them so glibly, is ever 

 at all likely, in his wildest moments, to have imagined. 



The cocoa-nut, in fact, is a subject well deserving of the most 

 sympathetic treatment at the gentle hands of grateful humanity. No 

 other plant is useful to us in so many diverse and remarkable manners. 

 It has been truly said of that friend of man, the domestic pig, that he 

 is all good, from the end of his snout to the tip of his tail ; but even 

 the pig, though he furnishes us with so many necessaries or luxuries — 

 from tooth-brushes to sausages, from ham to lard, from pepsine-wine 

 to pork pies — does not nearly approach, in the multiplicity and vari- 

 ety of his virtues, the all-sufficing and world-supplying cocoa-nut. A 

 Chinese proverb says that there are as many useful properties in the 

 cocoa-nut palm as there are days in the year ; and a Polynesian saying 

 tells us that the man who plants a cocoa-nut plants meat and drink, 

 hearth and home, vessels and clothing, for himself and his children 

 after him. Like the great Mr. Whiteley, the invaluable palm-tree 

 might modestly advertise itself as a universal provider. The solid 

 part of the nut supplies food almost alone to thousands of peo- 

 ple daily, and the milk serves them for drink, thus acting as an effi- 

 cient filter to the water absorbed by the roots in the most polluted or 

 malarious regions. If you tap the flower-stalk you get a sweet juice, 

 which can be boiled down into the peculiar sugar called (in the charm- 

 ing dialect of commerce) jaggery ; or it can be fermented into a very 

 nasty spirit known as palm- wine, toddy, or arrack ; or it can be mixed 

 with bitter herbs and roots to make that delectable compound " na- 

 tive beer." If you squeeze the dry nut you get cocoa-nut oil, which 

 is as good as lard for frying when fresh, and is " an excellent substi- 

 tute for butter at breakfast," on tropical tables. Under the mysteri- 



