180 THE MILK IN THE COCO-NUT 



nut water is the deposition of the nutty part around the 

 side of the shell ; it is, so to speak, the mother liquid, from 

 which the harder eatable portion is afterwards derived. 

 This state is not uncommon in embryo seeds. In a very 

 young pea, for example, the inside is quite watery, and only 

 the outer skin is at all solid, as we have all observed when 

 green peas first come into season. But the special pecu- 

 liarity of the coco-nut consists in the fact that this liquid 

 condition of the interior continues even after the nut is 

 ripe, and that is the really curious point about the milk in 

 the coco-nut which does actually need accounting for. 



In order to understand it one ought to examine a coco- 

 nut in the act of budding, and to do this it is by no means 

 necessary to visit the West Indies or the Pacific Islands ; 

 all you need to do is to ask a Covent Garden fruit salesman 

 to get you a few ' growers.' On the voyage to England, a 

 certain number of precocious coco-nuts, stimulated by the 

 congenial warmth and damp of most shipholds, usually 

 begin to sprout before their time ; and these waste nuts 

 are sold by the dealers at a low rate to East-end children 

 and inquiring botanists. An examination of a ' grower ' 

 very soon convinces one what is the use of the milk in the 

 coco-nut. 



It must be duly borne in mind, to begin with, that the 

 prime end and object of the nut is not to be eaten raw by 

 the ingenious monkey, or to be converted by lordly man 

 into coco-nut biscuits, or coco-nut pudding, but simply and 

 solely to reproduce the coco-nut palm in sufficient numbers 

 to future generations. For this purpose the nut has 

 slowly acquired by natural selection a number of protec- 

 tive defences against its numerous enemies, which serve to 

 guard it admirably in the native state from almost all 

 possible animal depredators. First of all, the actual nut 

 or seed itself consists of a tiny embryo plant, placed just 



