182 THE MILK IN THE COCO-NUT 



selection, however that deus ex machina of modern 

 science, which can perform such endless wonders, if only 

 you give it time enough to work in and variations enough to 

 work upon natural selection has come to the rescue of the 

 unhappy plant by leaving it a little hole at the top of the 

 shell, out of which it can push its feathery green head 

 without difficulty. Everybody knows that if you look at 

 the sharp end of a coco-nut you will see three little brown 

 pits or depressions on its surface. Most people also know 

 that two of these are firmly stopped up (for a reason to 

 which I shall presently recur), but that the third one is 

 only closed by a slight film or very thin shell, which can 

 be easily bored through with a pocket knife, so as to let 

 the milk run off before cracking the shell. So much we 

 have all learnt during our ardent pursuit of natural know- 

 ledge on half-holidays in early life. But we probably then 

 failed to observe that just opposite this soft hole lies a 

 small roundish knob, imbedded in the pulp or eatable 

 portion, which knob is in fact the embryo palm or seedling, 

 for whose ultimate benefit 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 sub- 

 ject. 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 coco-nut. As the seed or kernel 

 cannot 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 centre, 



