THE MILK IN THE COCO-NUT 183 



as the milk, till the tiny embryo begins to sprout. As 

 soon as it does so, the little knob which was at first so 

 very small enlarges rapidly and absorbs the water, till it 

 grows out into a big spongy cellular mass, which at last 

 almost fills up the entire shell. At the same time, its 

 other end pushes its way out through the soft hole, and 

 then gives birth to a growing bud at the top — the future 

 stem and leaves — and to a number of long threads beneath 

 — the future roots. Meanwhile, the spongy mass inside 

 begins gradually to absorb all the nutty part, using up its 

 oils and starches for the purpose of feeding the young 

 plant above, until it is of an age to expand its leaves to 

 the open tropical sunlight and shift for itself in the struggle 

 for life. It seems at first sight very hard to understand 

 how any tissue so solid as the pulp of coco-nut can be thus 

 softened and absorbed without any visible cause ; but in 

 the subtle chemistry of living vegetation such a transfor- 

 mation is comparatively simple and easy to perform. 

 Nature sometimes works much greater miracles than this 

 in the same way : for example, what is called vegetable 

 ivory, a substance so solid that it can be carved or turned 

 only with great difficulty, is really the kernel of another 

 palm-nut, allied to the coco-palm, and its very stony par- 

 ticles are all similarly absorbed during germination by the 

 dissolving power of the young seedlinj^. 



Why, however, has the coco-nut three pores at the top 

 instead of one, and why are two out of the three so care- 

 fully and firmly sealed up ? The explanation of this 

 strange peculiarity is only to be found in the ancestral 

 history of the coco-nut kind. Most nuts, indeed, start in 

 their earlier stage as if they meant to produce two or more 

 seeds each ; but as they ripen, all the seeds except one 

 become abortive. The almond, for example, has in the 

 flower two seeds or kernels to each nut ; but in the ripe 



