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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



wheel, addressed Professor 

 David, the head of the party, in 

 pidgin English : 



Photograph from Mrs. Rosamond Dodson Rhone 



DEMONSTRATING ONE OF THE MANY USES OE THE 

 COCONUT 



Water-bottles and drinking-cups are made from the 

 shell of the ripe coconut. The flesh is scooped out 

 through the eye end of the nut and the outer skin 

 ground off. Presto! a water-bottle, with a twist of 

 leaves for the cork. Cups are polished with the nut 

 oil and become ebony-colored with usage. The girl 

 holds in her hand a coconut grater for making "ana- 

 kiwi." She sits on the handle and works the coconut 

 back and forth over the metal beak. 



communication with the outside world ; 

 they were marooned on a tropic isle, 

 whose discomforts and limitations they 

 had discounted for science's sake, but 

 which loomed in importance with the 

 threatened failure of the expedition. A 

 native stepped out of the crowd of curi- 

 ous islanders, whose bare bodies made a 

 brown ring around the little group of 

 white men, and, pointing to the broken 



"lie no good?" 



"No good !" was the reply, 

 with a despondent shake of the 

 head. 



"One all saime belong me !" 

 said the native. 



"Belong you?" said Professor 

 David in amazement. "What 

 do you do with it ?" 



"Me plant him in coconut tree. 

 You look see?" 



The engineers did "look see," 

 for the native dug up the twin 

 of the broken wheel, which had 

 been left behind with the dis- 

 carded machinery of the previ- 

 ous expedition. It was put in 

 place and the drilling went on. 

 Mrs. David, who wrote what she 

 calls "An Unscientific Account 

 of a Scientific Expedition," has 

 in her book a photograph of the 

 "fertilizing wheel." 



"a vegetable giraffe" 



At first a coconut tree appears 

 rather silly and inadequate. 

 Mark Twain labeled it a feather 

 duster on a long pole ; Stevenson 

 called it a vegetable giraffe, "so 

 graceful, so ungainly." 



We are so accustomed to think 

 of a tree as having a solid verti- 

 cal trunk, diminished regularly 

 b y branches, balanced and 

 clothed with leaves, that a coco- 

 nut palm hardly resembles a tree. 

 It is bare to the top, tapering 

 very slightly. I sometimes think 

 of those sinuous trunks as ropes 

 attached to captive balloons 

 swaying in the wind. A fallen 

 trunk ringed with the marks of 

 decayed leaves looks like a great 

 gray hawser ; and yet this inadequate-ap- 

 pearing trunk suffices to sustain a tuft of 

 leaves each ten and fifteen feet long and 

 huge bunches of nuts eighty to one hun- 

 dred feet in the air. 



The coconut grove, seen from its edge, 

 as one approaches from the sea, with its 

 pale-gray slanting trunks and level tops, 

 is without dignity and rather disappoint- 

 ing; but seen from within, the trunks be- 



