328 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



That well describes the almost world-wide distribution of the 

 innumerable coco-nuts which, from times beyond the memory of man, 

 must have been carried on the shifting currents of the ocean into 

 the most distant parts of the world, many of them soon finding 

 congenial resting and growing places on the sandy coral rocks 

 of tropical seas, but some few floating on further and further till at 

 last a nut or two occasionally reached even to the cold and ungenial 

 European shore, there to be picked up by the wondering inhabitants 

 and esteemed so strange and marvellous that these "nuts of India" 

 were cunningly mounted with gold or silver for use as cups at the 

 most splendid of royal feasts, and later found place in the cabinets 

 of the curious. 



The coco-nut is certainly most at home — and is most necessary 

 to the life of the natives — in the islands of the South Seas, in that 

 wonderful group of innumerable islands, mostly very small, which 

 reaches out two-thirds of the way across from the Australian to the 

 American shore, and is right in the track of the great currents and in 

 the teeth of the mighty winds which sweep mainly from east to west 

 across the Pacific Ocean. On to the once bare rocky edges of these 

 islands and atolls (fig. 128), many a coco-nut must have drifted, taken root 

 and grown ; and in time countless numbers of these fringed every shore, 

 and crowned every island and islet and outstanding rock (fig. 129). The 

 most characteristic of all these islands are the coral atolls which at 

 some comparatively recent date have been lifted out of the ocean — 

 " strange rings of coral rock rising from the bottom of the sea." 

 Whenever these were raised they must, of course, have been at first 

 bare of vegetation. Even now one occasionally comes across one, 

 the bare rocks of which are not yet softened by any plant life, and 

 more often one comes across others on which as yet hardly anything 

 but the coco-nut and perhaps the screw-pine have yet found foothold. 



There is still many an island in the South Seas the natives of which — 

 if indeed there are any permanent inhabitants — have no food supply 

 except fish from the sea and the produce of the coco-nut palm and 

 screw-pine ; and it is really on the coco-nut that they are almost 

 solely dependent. At times, and for considerable periods when no 

 rain has fallen to refill the hollows in the rocks, these natives have 

 nothing but the " water " out of the young coco-nuts with which to 

 quench their thirst. 



Nor is it only for food and drink that the native is, or was, chiefly 

 dependent on this all-useful palm. He habitually uses the various 

 parts of the tree for all sorts of purposes. If he wants to fence off his 

 fish-ponds he does it with great masses of dead coco-nut leaves weighted 

 down with stones (Fanning Island and in some parts of Fiji). He 

 often builds his house of coco-nut leaves. If he wants to dance he 

 makes his special dress for that purpose of the same material. Of 

 it he makes, or used to make, mat sails for his boats. He makes all 

 the string or rope which he needs for innumerable purposes from the 

 fibre of the husk of the nut ; for instance, he fastens together even 



