Palms. 267 



southern counties, and sometimes, to a small extent, 

 imported. Externally, the Black walnut is double the 

 size of the genuine, but the kernel is much smaller in 

 proportion, and more oily, as expressed in the popular 

 name " Butter-nut." The nuts of the Juglans cmerea, 

 often sent to England as a curiosity, are oblong-ovoid, 

 very rough with prominent and irregular longitudinal 

 ridges, and acutely pointed at the upper extremity. 



THE COCO-NUT (Cocos nucifera), 



THE number of coco-nuts now annually imported amounts 

 to about three millions. They come chiefly from Jamaica, 

 British Guiana, and Honduras; some, also, from the west 

 coast of Africa. Nearly all are retained for home con- 

 sumption ; the confectioners use a few \ in the fresh state 

 no fruit brought from a foreign country is destined so 

 emphatically, not for grown people, but for the children. 

 The tree producing this famous nut is one of the 

 splendid order called the Palms, by Linnaeus styled the 

 Princes of the vegetable kingdom plants in the aggre- 

 gate of their fine characters truly royal, and in the 

 aggregate of their varied usefulness unrivalled. Instead 

 of possessing boughs, twigs, and innumerable leaves, 

 usually small, the palm is a living pillar, slender, cylindri- 

 cal, and erect, and capable of attaining, in one species 

 or another, the stature of sixty, eighty, a hundred, even 



