Vol. XXIII. No. 9.] 



POPULAR SCIENCE ITEWS. 



135 



been caused by them. The eflect of lead is 

 dependent upon the presence of sulphur in 

 the hair, which unites with the colorless salt 

 in the dye, forming a brown or black sulphide 

 of lead. With silver dyes, the well-known 

 blackening effect of light is added. Dyes 

 containing silver are not much used nowadays, 

 as the bright purple tint they give to the hair, 

 while it may be highly ornamental, is cer- 

 tainly not very natural. The bleaching 

 solutions, lor changing dark hair to an 

 alleged blonde color, consist of a solution of 

 peroxide of hydrogen. The substance only 

 gives a dead, unnatural, grayish hue to the 

 hair, and is always to be avoided. 



Hair restorers, for increasing the growth of 

 the hair, are rarely of any benefit, and usually 

 owe their properties to cantharides or some 

 similar irritant or stimulating substance. 

 When the hair-producing glands are inactive 

 and sluggish in their action, they may some- 

 times be stimulated to increased activity, but 

 in all such cases the advice of a physician 

 should be taken. When the glands are de- 

 stroyed, from disease or any other cause, it is 

 impossible to cause the hair to grow again. 



Flesh powder should consist of finely pow- 

 dered starch or rice flour, with a trace of 

 perfume, or, in some cases, pulverized talc 

 may be used instead. Such preparations are 

 not objectionable, but only the best qualities 

 should be used, as the cheaper preparations 

 are often very coarse and impure. Some 

 years ago samples of powder were offered for 

 sale in England which contained a consider- 

 able amount of arsenious acid. 



The various cosmetics and washes for the 

 skin usually contain zinc, bismuth, lead, or 

 mercury. They are really nothing but paints, 

 and are not only injurious from the poisonous 

 metallic substances they contain, but they fill 

 up the pores of the skin, and thus increase 

 the troubles they are supposed to remedy. 

 A bad complexion is usually dependent upon 

 constitutional causes, and cannot be improved 

 by outward applications. 



Cologne water, as well as most other liquid 

 perfumes, is a solution of various odoriferous 

 gums and oils in very pure alcohol. If a few 

 drops are poured into a glass of water, the 

 alcohol is so much diluted that the dissolved 

 substances are precipitated out, forming a 

 light cloud in the water. The perfume indus- 

 try is a very extensive one, and the quality 

 of the products varies all the way from very 

 good to very bad — principally the latter, we 

 should judge from our personal experience. 



Tooth-powder is, or should be, composed 

 of finely powdered chalk and soap. Chalk 

 has a scientific interest, in that it is made up 

 of the skeletons of myriads of microscopical 

 animals, which lived in past geological ages, 

 and it is a curious thought that millions of 

 years ago certain little animals lived and died, 

 that their remains might, in a future age, 



serve to cleanse the teeth of a being whose 

 future existence was not, at that time, even 

 hinted at in the structure of any living organ- 

 ism. 



As to the more objectionable toilet prepara- 

 tions, — such as solutions for brightening the 

 eyes, preparations of arsenic for the complex- 

 ion, blue paint to imitate the veins under the 

 skin, enamels for covering up defects, etc., 

 — they are of no interest or value, either 

 scientific or practical, but are both dangerous 

 and useless, and to be avoided under all 

 circumstances ; while the natural cosmetics — 

 pure soap and water, plain, simple food, and 

 correct hygienic habits — will always produce 

 the beauty of good health, which is its best 

 and most attractive form. 



[Original in The Popular Science JV. m'S.] 

 COCO, CACAO, AND COCA. 



BY FREd'k LEROV SARGENT. 

 PART I. 



Professor Balfour* has recently directed the 

 attention of botanists to the very prevalent confu- 

 sion which exists in regard to the spelling of the 

 names which appear above, and considers it high 

 time to call a halt in the continuance of errors, into 

 which some of our best dictionaries have fallen. 

 Not only is the real etymology obscured by the 

 common use of the words "cocoa-nut" and "cocoa," 

 but there is the false implication that the same kind 

 of plant is the source of both products, and, since 

 the drugs coca and cocaine have lately come into 

 prominence, a still further confusion of things dis- 

 tinct has been only too natural. In the belief that 

 accurate information on the subject would be of 

 general interest, the following account of these 

 three plants has been prepared. 



If we take a coco-nut in the condition it comes to 

 our markets, i. e., stripped of its outer husks, it will 

 be found to have at its base three dark-colored spots, 

 which, by a slight stretch of the imagination, may 

 be fancied to resemble the eyes and mouth of a 

 monkey, the nose being represented by the apex of 

 the rounded end. To the eacly Portuguese colonists 

 in India, this peculiarity, it is said, recalled the 

 facial expression assumed by a monkey when utter- 

 ing a cry that sounds like co-co, and suggested to 

 them the name, which, in their language, becomes 

 coquo, quoquo, or coco. Although this derivation is 

 the one most widely accepted, it has been doubted 

 by certain writers, and other etymologies proposed. 

 One connects the name with the Arabic gauzos Indi 

 OT geuzos Indi, meaning nux Indica (nut of India), 

 a name by which the fruit was early known, and 

 which appears in the Turkish equivalent, cock-lndi. 

 Other sources suggested are an old Egyptian word 

 kuku, and the Greek kokkos, meaning a berry. For 

 the botanical name, Linn:eus forced the common 

 name into a Latin form, and christened the plant 

 Cocos nucifera — the nut-bearing coco. 



What is of especial interest for our purpose is 

 thai none of these derivations support the spelling 

 "cocoa." To answer the question, "How, then, 

 can such a spelling have arisen.'" Professor Balfour 

 cites the following quotation from Dr. Murray : 



"The spelling 'cocoa' for the Cocos nucifera is cer- 

 tainly wrong, and due merely to ignorance or con- 

 fusion last century. All the people who knew wrote 

 'coco,' and only those who thought that 'coco' and 



♦Annuls of Botany, ^'ol. II., No. z. 



'cacao' were the same, or otherwise knew imper- 

 fectly, wrote 'cocoa.' I cannot say absolutely who 

 first did so ; I have a quotation from Thomson's 

 seasons with cocoa : 



'Give me to drain the cocoa's milky howl'; 



but I suspect (and hope) that this is only in later 

 editions. Dr. Johnson, who rightly wrote 'coco,' 

 pi. 'cocoes,' in his Life of Drake, written 1779, did 

 not know the difference between 'coco' and 'cacao,' 

 when he made his dictionary in 1755, and so, after 

 explaining 'cocoa' as cacoatal. Span., and therefore 

 more properly written 'cacao,' he actually illustrates 

 it by a quotation from Miller for Cocos nucifera 

 (which Miller himself wrote 'coco'), and another 

 from Hill's Materia Medica for the 'cacao' of South 

 America, thus identifying the two. I strongly sus- 

 pect this blunder of the Doctor's was the source of 

 all subsequent confusion. 



"Bailey's Dictionary, in every edition from 1721 

 to Johnson's time, completely separated 



' Coco-tree : An Indian tree, much like a date-tree, the nut ot 



\vhich contains a sweet suhstance,' etc., 

 from 

 'Cocao, Cacao, Cacoa: An Indian nut, of which chocolate is 



made.' 



"Botanists and careful writers long after that 

 stuck to 'coco,' as does also Tennyson in Enoch 

 Arden : 



'The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes.' 



"I shall certainly use 'coco' in the dictionary, and 

 treat 'cocoa' as an incorrect by-form." 



The coco-nut is a palm, and in appearance, as in 

 worth, is one of the most noble members of that 

 family, which Linnieus called the "Princes of the 

 Vegetable Kingdom." Throughout the tropics the 

 coco-nut trees form a most imposing feature of the 

 landscape, their cylindrical trunks rising from sixty 

 to one hundred feet, and surmounted by a circle of 

 graceful pinnate leaves, about twenty feet in length, 

 and perhaps with a cluster of fruits, each nearly as 

 large as a man's head. They thrive best at the sea- 

 shore, and, in many of the islands of the Pacific, 

 form the chief part of the vegetation. Growing in 

 such situations, the large fruits often fall into the 

 water. They float easily, and, being somewhat 

 boat-like in form, seem well fitted for transportation 

 by winds and ocean currents. The seeds, moreover, 

 retain their vitality under such circumstances long 

 enough to be carried vast distances, and this makes 

 it easy to account for the very wide distribution of 

 coco-nut trees in both the old and the new world. 



When we find a plant thus widely distributed, it 

 becomes a difiicult matter to decide what region was 

 its original home. In the case of the coco-nut, 

 those who have given the matter the most study are 

 divided as to whether it is a native of tropical 

 America or tropical Asia. DeCandolle, in his 

 Origin of Cultirated I'lants, after a careful review 

 of much conflicting evidence, favors the theory of 

 an origin in the East Indian Archipelago. It is 

 certain that in that region there are the surest indi- 

 cations of an ancient cultivation, and we find toda^- 

 that it is there that the natives best know how to 

 make full use of the many products which this plant 

 affords. 



The comparatively small use which we make of 

 what comes to us from the coco-nut, gives us but a 

 poor idea of the importance this plant assumes in 

 tropical countries. As in grazing regions the 

 wealth of a man is reckoned by the number of ani- 

 mals he owns, so where the coco-nut is cultivated, 

 he is the richest who owns the most trees. The 

 extent to which this is carried is amusingly illus- 

 trated by a case cited by Sir J. Emerson Trennent, 

 as coming up for trial in the Ceylonese district 



