A VERY SUGGESTIVE CHAPTER. 147 



and the eyes of the nut pierced, you get at the milk as it is 

 called ; and when the nut is not quite ripe, this will be found 

 to measure a pint or a pint and a half. The milk is perfectly 

 clear, and in taste combines acidity and sweetness equal to the 

 finest lemonade. It is deliciously cold, but to drink much of 

 it is bad for most Europeans. The mixture of a little good 

 brandy or gin with it is a first-class corrective. 



In a few weeks after the nut has reached its full size, a soft 

 white pulp, remarkably delicate and sweet, resembling in ap- 

 pearance and consistence the white of a slightly-boiled egg, is 

 formed around the inside of the shell. If allowed to hang two or 

 three months longer on the tree, the outside skin becomes yellow 

 and brown ; the skin hardens, the kernel increases to an inch or 

 an inch and a quarter in thickness, and the milk is reduced to 

 about half a pint. 



One of the most extraordinary facts in natural history is the 

 reproduction of the cocoa-nut tree by itself ; and although this 

 may be an oft-told tale, an account of it should, I think, not be 

 omitted from a work treating of the land of cocoa-nuts as well 

 as coral. If the nut be kept long after it is fully ripe, a white, 

 sweet, spongy substance is formed in the inside, originating at 

 the inner end of the germ which is enclosed in the kernel im- 

 mediately opposite one of the three apertures in the sharpest 

 end of the shell, which is opposite to that where the stalk is 

 united to the husk. This fibrous sponge ultimately absorbs 

 the water and fills the concavity, dissolving the hard kernel, 

 and combining it with its own substance, so that the shell, instead 

 of containing a kernel and milk, encloses only a soft cellular 

 substance. While this marvellous process is going on within 

 the nut, a single bud or shoot of a white colour, but hard 

 texture, forces its way through one of the holes or 'eyes' of 

 the shell, perforates the tough fibrous husk, and after rising 



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