54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



knob is in fact the embryo palm or seedling, for wbose ultimate bene- 

 fit the whole arrangement (in brown and green) has been invented. 

 That is very much the way with man : he notices what concerns his 

 own appetite, and omits all the really important parts of the whole 

 subject. We think the use of the hole is to let out the milk ; but the 

 nut knows that its real object is to let out the seedling. The knob 

 grows out at last into the young plantlet, and it is by means of the 

 soft hole that it makes its escape through the shell to the air and the 

 sunshine which it seeks without. 



This brings us really down at last to the true raison d^etre for the 

 milk in the cocoa-nut. As the seed or kernel can not easily get at 

 much water from outside, it has a good supply of water laid up for it 

 ready beforehand within its own encircling shell. The mother-liquid 

 from which the pulp or nutty part has been deposited remains in the 

 center, as the milk, till the tiny embryo begins to sprout. As soon as 

 it does so, the little knob which was at first so very small enlarges 

 rapidly and absorbs the water, till it grows out into a big, spongy cel- 

 lular mass, which at last almost fills up the entire shell. At the same 

 time, its other end pushes its way out through the soft hole, and then 

 gives birth to a growing bud at the top — the future stem and leaves — 

 and to a number of long threads beneath — ^the future roots. Mean- 

 while, the spongy mass inside begins gradually to absorb all the nutty 

 part, using up its oils and starches for the purpose of feeding the 

 young plant above, until it is of an age to expand its leaves to the open 

 tropical sunlight and shift for itself in the struggle for life. It seems 

 at first sight very hard to understand how any tissue so solid as the 

 pulp of cocoa-nut can be thus softened and absorbed without any visi- 

 ble cause ; but in the subtile chemistry of living vegetation such a 

 transformation is comparatively simple and easy to perform. Nature 

 sometimes works much greater miracles than this in the same way : 

 for example, what is called vegetable ivory, a substance so solid that 

 it can be carved or turned only with great difficulty, is really the ker- 

 nel of another palm-nut, allied to the cocoa-palm, and its very stony 

 particles are all similarly absorbed during germination by the dissolv- 

 ing power of the young seedling. 



Why, however, has the cocoa-nut three pores at the top instead of 

 one, and why are two out of the three so carefully and firmly sealed 

 up ? The explanation of this strange peculiarity is only to be found 

 in the ancestral history of the cocoa-nut kind. Most nuts, indeed, 

 start in their earlier stage as if they meant to produce two or more 

 seeds each ; but, as they ripen, all the seeds except one become abor- 

 tive. The almond, for example, has in the flower two seeds or ker- 

 nels to each nut ; but in the ripe state there is generally only one, 

 though occasionally we find an almond with two — a philopena, as we 

 commonly call it — just to keep in memory the original arrangement 

 of its earlier ancestors. The reason for this is that plants whose fruits 



