104 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
We must not, in passing, forget the humble, though 
exceedingly important gourd or calabash. Our gourd is the 
fruit of a pumpkin-like vine, but in warmer climes the gourd 
grows on trees. The individual who rejoiced when struck by 
a falling apple that pumpkins do not grow on trees, had 
certainly never visited the tropics. The calabash is often as 
large as a pumpkin with a hard and woody shell, covered 
with a thin green rind. Inside it is filled with a mass of seeds 
and pulp that suggest our gourd, but the two are not related. 
The natives utilize the calabash in many ways. Their dishes, 
jars, baskets, water bottles, and in fact most of their household 
utensils are made from it. 
The cocoanut is said to be the most useful tree in the 
whole world. It is certainly so in the tropics. Sugar, wine, 
oil, fibre, timber, cloth, and a host of other things are obtained 
from it. A tree comes into bearing about seven years after 
planting and bears for a lifetime, not an annual crop, like our 
nut trees, but in perpetual season. There is always a small 
cartload of fruit in various stages of development at its crown. 
Each leaf that puts out is followed by a string of flowers 
succeeded by several nuts. When growing the cocoanuts are 
enclosed in a thick husk. The three eye-like spots on the end 
of the cocoanut are not produced artificially as many suppose. 
On the tree they are turned toward the stem as if watching to 
see that it does not let go of the tree until ripe. The cocoanut 
reaches its full size before the meat within begins to develope. 
At this stage it contains about a pint of cool, clear, slightly 
acid, water v/ith a faint cocoanut taste. One may drink this 
in any quantity without ill effects. It is a most excellent, 
refreshing and desirable drink in a land where practically all 
the drinking vvater is taken from the streams and often without 
regard to the fact that a large number of colored folks are 
washing their clothes further up in the same stream. In the 
towns, venders go about w^ith cartloads of these ''water cocoa- 
