CABBAGE PALM AND GRUB 131 



bad breeding when anyone enters a house during meal- 

 time, or even passes before the door, not to invite him 

 to share the family repast. The invitation is more often 

 refused than accepted. There are times when this 

 extreme courtesy has its disadvantages, for now and 

 again a hungry crowd, regardless of etiquette, takes the 

 host at his word, and he finds himself face to face with 

 the performance of a miracle like that of the loaves and 

 fishes. But no basketfuls are cleared away after such 

 a feast, nor does the multitude disperse having eaten 

 its fill. 



I was surprised to learn that the people at La Prision 

 were ignorant of the fact that several members of the 

 palm family supply food, although many palms exist in 

 the forest around. In Trinidad and other places two 

 delicacies are obtained, chiefly from the stately palm 

 known as the cabbage palm. The heart of the upper 

 part or crown, which is in reality the leaf in embryo, 

 furnishes a vegetable, while the rest of the tree nurtures 

 a grub considered by those accustomed from early youth 

 to see these unsightly grubs at table, one of the daintiest 

 of delicacies. To such an extent is early training 

 responsible for our prejudices in after life, that I have 

 known people who would dine off semi-putrid venison 

 and living cheese say, in the charitably indirect language 

 sanctioned by society, to a host who had gone to the 

 trouble to provide the best he could think of, and had, 

 amongst other things, thought of palm grubs, that such 

 worms were food for pigs but not for human beings. And 

 this is how we are governed throughout our lives in 

 more important matters by the petty ideas imbibed in our 

 youth in petty surroundings. But I am wandering away 

 from the palm-grub, whose life history is more interesting 



K 2 



