176 THE MILK IN THE COCO-NUT 



THE MILK IN THE COCO-NUT 



FOR many centuries the occult problem how to account for 

 the milk in the coco-nut has awakened the profoundest 

 interest alike of ingenuous infancy and of maturer scien- 

 tific age. Though it cannot 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 doubt- 

 less went to his grave without ever having tasted it fresh 

 from the nut under a tropical verandah), 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 upon that abstruse question is unworthy of such 

 an exalted name. The cosmogony and the milk in the 

 coco-nut are, however, a great deal closer together in 

 thought than Sanchoniathon or Manetho, or the rogue who 

 quoted them so glibly, is ever at all likely, in his wildest 

 moments, to have imagined. 



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

 most sympathetic treatment at the gentle hands of grate- 

 ful 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 



