188 KEW GARDENS 



tree is of still more general utility, since it not 

 only "bears at once the cup and milk and fruit," 

 but supplies salad from the young shoots and 

 toddy from the quickly fermented juice ; bowls 

 and lamps from its shells, and from its pulp, oil 

 to fill them ; cordage, mats, ornamental wreaths 

 and plaited armour from its fibre ; fans, baskets, 

 thatch from its leaves ; torches from the ribs, and 

 countless other articles of daily use. The Malays, 

 who train monkeys to run up the trees and bring 

 down nuts for their master, have contrived an 

 ingenious clock which Dr. Wallace saw used by 

 sailors : in a bucket floats a scraped half-shell 

 with a small hole bored in the bottom to let in 

 a thread of water at a rate so exactly calculated 

 that the shell sinks at the end of an hour. There 

 are South Sea islands where brackish water 

 makes the people wholly dependent on this tree 

 for drink. Then modern trade has given coco- 

 nuts a new value, dried in the form of copra and 

 shipped to Marseilles and elsewhere, to have the 

 oil pressed out for making soap and candles, not 

 to mention the "best olive oil" of commerce, 

 while the refuse goes as fattening food for cattle. 

 That is the main thing we get from Polynesia 

 and Micronesia in exchange for trousers, sewing- 



