THE COCOA-NUT PALM. 
261 
furious gale, so that it seemed as if they would be 
torn from their strong bases and carried away ; yet 
even in such circumstances, the bending and rocking 
of the stem was much less than that of an ordinary 
tree of correspondent dimensions. The iron-like 
firmness of the outer wood of a tall palm, the necessary 
result of its endogenous growth, doubtless is the cause 
of this rigidity. 
The Palms have no proper bark, nor is their surface 
scored with longitudinal furrows ; but they are fre- 
quently roughened with transverse projections, the 
bases of the fronds that have been successively thrown 
off. In the Cocoa-nut these are strongly marked, 
and form a sort of rude steps which afford great 
facility for climbing the tree. Around these bases a 
curious substance lies in large sheathing irregular 
pieces. At first sight one would pronounce it a 
coarse loose cloth, so like a textile fabric are the 
strong but slender fibres which are interwoven at 
right angles to each other. It is however a natural 
tissue, which spontaneously separates from the base 
of the huge leafstalk. 
Another thing that strikes one forcibly in a grove 
of Palms is to see in the trunk the same thickness 
associated with all gradations of stature. Nor is 
the novelty of the appearance much diminished by 
the knowledge that such a phenomenon is also an in- 
variable accompaniment of the endogenous structure 
already alluded to. We are so accustomed to see 
the size of a tree-head, the height, and the thick- 
ness of the trunk, always bearing (at least approxi- 
mately) the same proportions, that when we see the 
