134 NATURAL AND ECONOMICAL HISTOKY 
with a pulpy substance, while the centre is filled with an 
aqueous fluid. This fluid is at first slightly astringent 
and sub-acid ; as the fruit ripens, it becomes sweetish, 
and not unlike the colour and consistence of the whey of 
inilk *. When drank before the sun has far advanced, it 
is much cooler than the atmosphere, and is then a pleasant 
beveragCo Natives, particularly when travelling, generally 
furnish themselves with a few unripe nuts {Lanias Por- 
tuguese), the water of which they drink, and eat the pulpy 
portion or kernel. Upon a few repasts of this kind^ a man 
will labour from morning till night, without any other article 
of diet -f. The native inhabitants of the coasts of some of the 
islands in the Equinoctial Zone, are more palmivorous than 
granivorous. Where a people can be satisfied with food so 
easily procured as the produce of the coco-nut tree is, in 
some tropical regions^ they are little sensible to the ordinary 
motives which impel mankind to labour. The Reverend 
Mr CoRDiNEE says, and perhaps with truth, that the per- 
son who possesses a garden with twelve coco trees and two 
jack trees, has no call to make any exertion. 
The husk or fibrous pericarp of the nut is employed 
to polish furniture, and to scour the floors of rooms, &c. 
Birds, who build pendulous nests, commonly construct 
them of this subst£^nceo Its chief use, however, is in the 
® The following are the proportions of the liquid contained in the nutj 
aa given in the Journal de Pharmacie, torn. ii. p. 98., extracted from 
Trommsdorff's Journal; — " Le Jiquide est clair et sans couleur comme de 
I'eau, sans odeur, et d'une saveur douceatre semblable aux noix. La pesan- 
teur specifique comparee a celle de I'eau est de 1,010." 
The result of a chemical examination of the liquid is, that " le sue de la 
noix serait compose de beaucoup d'eau, du sucre liquide, d'un peu de gommc* 
et d'un sel vegetal. 
•j" To fetch coco-nuts from trees as they are wanted, the Malays have 
trained monkeys, which are more expert at the business than any toddy -drawer 
on the coast of Coromandel.»— Hevnr's Letters on Sumatra, 
