al depredators. First of all, the
actual nut or seed itself consists of a tiny embryo plant, placed just
inside the softest of the three pores or pits at the end of the shell,
and surrounded by a vast quantity of nutritious pulp, destined to feed
and support it during its earliest unprotected days, if not otherwise
diverted by man or monkey. But as whatever feeds a young plant will also
feed an animal, and as many animals betray a felonious desire to
appropriate to their own wicked ends the food-stuffs laid up by the palm
for the use of its own seedling, the coco-nut has been compelled to
inclose this particularly large and rich kernel in a very solid and
defensive shell. And, once more, since the palm grows at a very great
height from the ground--I have seen them up to ninety feet in favourable
circumstances--this shell stands a very good chance of getting broken in
tumbling to the earth, so that it has been necessary to surround it with
a mass of soft and yielding fibrous material, which breaks its fall, and
acts as a buffer to it when it comes in contact with the soil beneath.
So many protections has the coco-nut gradually devised for itself by the
continuous survival of the best adapted amid numberless and endless
spontaneous variations of all its kind in past time.

Now, when the coco-nut has actually reached the ground at last, and
proceeds to sprout in the spot where chance (perhaps in the bodily shape
of a disappointed monkey) has chosen to cast it, these numerous
safeguards and solid envelopes naturally begin to prove decided
nuisances to the embryo within. It starts under the great disadvantage
of being hermetically sealed within a solid wooden shell, so that no
water can possibly get at it to aid it as most other seeds are aided in
the process of germination. Fancy yourself a seed-pea, anxious to
sprout, but coated all round with a hard covering of impermeable
sealing-wax, and you will be in a position faintly to appreciate the
unfortunate predicament of a grower coco-nut. Natural selection,
however--that _deus ex machina_ of modern science, which can perform
such endless wonders, if only you give it time enough to work in and
variations enough to work upon--natural selection has come to the rescue
of the unhappy plant by leaving it a little hole at the top of the
shell, out of which it can push its feathery green head without
difficulty. Everybody knows that if you look at the sharp end of a
coco-nut you wil